Today VMware has announced the new network virtualization product VMware NSX. How cool is that name by the way? Now normally I dont write articles on the new products we announce (excluding vCloud Director related), but if anyone watched my Chinwag with Mike Laverick, I find this one of particular interest. My personal opinion is that this is the next major wave of virtualization, and VMware is at the forefront of the technology again. Back in the day when I was a Windows NT 3rd Line Engineer, I got involved in networking a lot more, even passing my CCNA (dont ask me a single question about it, I have forgotten more than I learnt) but I have always found the networking side of the datacenter infrastructure interesting. Now I am no Kamau Wanguhu, but I know a thing or two about networking, so this technology for me is of awesome […]
Tag Archives | virtualization
Top Virtualization blog voting now open
Eric Siebert over at vsphere-land has opened the 2013 voting for the top virtualization blogs. I am hoping to make it into the top 50 this year. This is the first time my blog has been listed and included for the voting, so I am excited to see what people think of my blog and its content. The top 10 sites I voted for are: Duncan Epping Kendrick Coleman Chris Colotti Eric Sloof Cormac Hogan Rawlinson Rivera William Lam Alan Renouf Frank Denneman Rick Vanover Anyone looking to vote should follow Eric’s criteria when choosing there top 10. Longevity – Anyone can start a blog but it requires dedication, time & effort to keep it going. Some bloggers start a blog only to have it fall to the wayside several months later. Things always come up in life but the good bloggers keep going regardless of what is happening in their […]
vCloud Ecosystem components explained
During VMworld Chris Colotti and I presented quite a few group discussions on VMware vCloud. During these discussions some people were amazed to find out how many components/products are involved in making up the vCloud environment. When planning on building a VMware vCloud, you are not just installing vCloud Director and pointing it to vSphere, you are designing/building a whole Ecosystem. The list below shows which components are used in building a full vCloud environment. They are listed in order of priority. vSphere ESXi vCenter vCloud Director vShield Manager vCenter Chargeback Vcenter Update Manager vCenter Orchestrator vCloud Service Manager vCloud Connector So why are these components important? When designing a vCloud environment, you need to take into consideration the availability of certain components, like vCenter for example. This is no longer a management tool that is used to manage your virtual infrastructure. This is a critical component of your vCloud […]
Cannot add groups to vCD after configuring LDAP
I discovered today building a new vCD 1.5 home lab, that once you configure the System LDAP, you dont have the option to add any LDAP groups. This confused me, it was possible to do this in 1.0.x. Why isn’t it available in 1.5? What I discovered is that the GUI is still configured for non LDAP authentication. Once you have configured LDAP and started the synchronization log out of the vCloud Director GUI and back in. You will then see that groups is listed under the administration tab. The GUI needs to update its configuration options. Simple solution, but still confusing until you realise.
How-To: Re-install VMware vCloud Director
A few of my colleagues have been working on this recently, and the process has been released on some of the communities forums. I thought I would share this process to help people re-build there dev environments and labs. This process documents how to wipe and re-install vCD, with the same version number. 1. Export vApp Templates and any other vApps that are required in the re-built environment from the existing environment. 2. Remove the VMware vCloud Director Configuration Components such as Virtual Datacenters, Organizations, vApps, VMs, Networks Pools and so on– manually. 3. Cleanup the External Networks. 4. Verify that all organization / vApp network portgroups are removed from the vSwitches/dvSwitches. You will still need the portgroups provisioned for the External Networks. 5. Cleanup all the Resource group datastores. 6. Unprepare the ESX/ESXi Hosts from the VMware vCloud Director web console. 7. Verify on the ESX/ESXi Hosts that the […]