Host Preparation Troubleshooting Enhancements with NSX 6.3.5
VMware NSX 6.3.5 was released last week. This is a maintenance release and addresses 32 issues in previous versions. You can find the release notes here. One thing caught my eye which is a very welcome addition to 6.3.5; Host prep now has troubleshooting enhancements,…
Getting a list of VDS Portgroups from the vCenter Database
Disclaimer: this is not something for production environments (at least, I hope for your sake, GSS should be able to fix it), but more for test or homelab environments. Say your vCenter is broken. And I mean really really broken to the point where you…
How to define two NetFlow targets in vSphere VDS
Sorry, you actually can’t configure two Netflow targets in vSphere. ;-) HOWEVER! There’s a way around this limitation. Currently, the VDS only supports one Netflow target IP address to send NetFlow to. This limitation can cause some issues when you want to employ multiple Netflow…
Editing uneditable VMs in vCenter
Certain service appliances cannot be edited manually inside vCenter. For instance, VMware NSX Edge appliances are an example of such service appliances. These VMs are managed by the NSX Manager and you shouldn’t change their configuration manually. Normally. ;-) But sometimes you need to edit…
New VMware Fling – Autopology (Drag and Drop NSX Network Topologies? Yes Please!)
The VMware Fling labs is one of my favourite things, as it brings some awesome new tech straight from VMware R&D. Some of these flings flow to the product cycles (remember the HTML5 client, now default in vCenter?). And they did it again! Ever since…
Exporting your Amazon Kindle Highlights & Notes to MySQL
As a wise man said; now for something completely different. This post is going to be just that. I received a Amazon Kindle on christmas and absolutely love it. It has replaced hauling around a bunch of physical books and made my life a lot…
VMware NSX 6.3 is here!
NSX 6.3 has just been made generally available and it’s a humongous one. The changes in this new version reflect a new maturation phase in which NSX is now in. Here are my top picks, for the entire list of changes go here. Controller Disconnect…
vRealize Network Insight Bulk Import of Data Sources
I’ve been rolling out quite a few vRealize Network Insight deployments (labs, Proof-of-Concepts) and while the installation of Network Insight is a cake walk (see automated installer here), add the data sources can be time consuming if you have a bunch of switches and/or other…
Installing vRealize Network Insight with PowerCLI
The good people of vRealize Network Insight made the OVAs of Network Insight 3.2 Import-vApp safe, which means you can now install it with PowerCLI! Network Insight consists of two VMs; the Platform VM and the Proxy VM. The setup process looks like this: Deploy…
Using VMware NSX to get IPv6 connectivity at home
IPv6 is here and IPv4 is definitely running out of time. Here in the Netherlands, the consumer internet providers have been “working on it” for years. I’ve been lobbying for IPv6 connectivity for years, without much luck. After a time of experimenting with IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnels…
Connecting a VPN between AWS and VMware NSX
Amazon Web Services has a few ways of giving you connectivity: internet, Direct Connect (a physical line) and VPN. While AWS has a ton of examples for firewall/VPN vendors, there is none for connecting with NSX. I needed to connect a NSX network with AWS…
Monitoring Firewall Rules with vRealize Network Insight
vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) is most famous for its ability to help you with getting insight into your virtual traffic flows. Using that information you have all you need to configure micro-segmentation. vRNI is much more than that though and this post is the first…