How to Upgrade to vRealize Network Insight 4.1

How to Upgrade to vRealize Network Insight 4.1
After upgrading to vRealize Operations Manager 7.5, my next task at hand was upgrading to vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) 4.1. I’m really looking forward to this release because it supports VMware Enterprise PKS and Kubernetes as a data source. Very cool! vRNI 4.1 What’s New! Martijn Smit recently made the move to the vRealize Network ...

How to Upgrade to vRealize Operations Manager 7.5

How to Upgrade to vRealize Operations Manager 7.5
It was time to upgrade the operations management layer of my homelab environment. This includes an upgrade to vRealize Operations Manager 7.5. vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 What’s New! vROps 7.5 introduces a lot of exciting new features, including: vSAN-aware performance optimization Return of the allocation model Identify orphaned (or “zombie”) virtual disks with reclaimable capacity ...

Runecast Analyzer support for VMware HCL Beta

Runecast Analyzer support for VMware HCL Beta
I have been in contact with Runecast since VMworld 2018. They deliver a product called Runecast Analyzer. It basically allows you to stay on top of the overall health of your VMware environment. They – for example – automatically scan the online VMware Knowledge Base using their “Proactive automation engine” to search for any known ...

Adding a Second Site – Running in Ravello Cloud – to my Homelab using pfSense and OpenVPN

21. February 2019 Homelab, SDDC 0
Adding a Second Site – Running in Ravello Cloud – to my Homelab using pfSense and OpenVPN
Introduction In my homelab, I’m currently running a fully nested VMware environment in a single box. With the necessary tweaking and tuning, and thanks to fast NVME SSD storage, I can quite comfortably run 6 ESXi hosts concurrently. 4 Nodes with vSAN are running the management cluster (non-stop), and two 2-node clusters with NFS storage (provided ...

Adding NSX-T to my nested VMware homelab

Adding NSX-T to my nested VMware homelab
Nested homelab and NSX-T I recently published a blogpost about my fully nested VMware homelab.After completing a beta NSX-T Install, Configure and Manage course, I was  keen on adding NSX-T to the mix. The beauty of NSX-T is that it is not hard coupled to vCenter Server. By simply adding another (nested) ESXi host to ...

My NSX one-arm load balancing epiphany

19. December 2017 NSX, SDDC, VMware 0
My NSX one-arm load balancing epiphany
Common load balancing topologies Sometimes you stumble across something so obvious that you cannot believe you missed it. I had such a moment today. I have been discussing load balancing topologies with one of my customers in the last few days and in each discussion we stayed exactly within the predefined color lines: a one-arm ...

Consuming the VMware NSX API

30. November 2016 NSX, SDDC, VMware 0
Using the NSX API as a consumption layer VMware’s Software Defined Networking (SDN) solution NSX is architecturally separated in different planes: the management plane, the control plane and the data plane. Right at the top of these three planes sits the consumption layer of NSX. This can be the vSphere Client GUI, a Cloud Management solution ...