A low budget SMB environment – A HowTo (Part 1: Parts and budget)
As the last days of 2015 tick away, I wanted to share how I came about my new lab environment without spending a fortune. Some of you might want to set some goals for the new year and this might be some interesting input. My…
PowerShell Friday: Connecting to vCenter
For our first cmdlet on PowerShell Friday we are going to connect to vCenter. Before we can do anything useful on an ESXi host or vCenter we need to connect to the server. Connecting to vCenter or an ESXi host is done with the command:…
Track infrastructure changes with vRealize Automation Data Collection
vRealize Automation Data Collection is the process where it connects to its infrastructure source endpoints and their compute resources to collect all kinds of information. Within vRealize Automation there are different data collection types: Infrastructure Source Endpoint Data Collection; Updates information about virtualization hosts, templates, and…
How to install Micro Segmentation on your vSphere cluster – a Step-by-step guide
Micro segmentation is probably the number one reason for companies with vSphere to purchase NSX. This feature inserts a packet filter in between your VMs. A filter you can configure centrally, link to single VMs, groups of VMs, kinds of VMs and specify according to your…
How to: Build a custom image with vSphere ESXi Image Builder CLI
In February I’ve build myself a new home lab with some Shuttle DS81’s, as I described in detail. But due to the vSphere 6 release date and the upcoming ‘Barista-as-a-Service’-VMUG demo I used vSphere 5.5 Update 2. But now vSphere 6 is GA and the VMUG…
How to properly license your infrastructure
Making sure you have the right licenses for your infrastructure is hard work. Real hard work. A lot of companies have one or more employees just to make sure they conform to all licensing requirements of their vendors. To make life a little easier I collected…
The (Un)official VMware VCIX-NV Study Guide
VMware released a new certification for NSX back in October 2014; the VMware Certified Implementation Expert (VCIX-NV). This new certification is the next level for VMware Certified Professional – Network Virtualization (VCP-NV) and validates your skills and your ability to install, configure and administer VMware…
Microsoft SQL 2014 Licensing in a VMware environment
I still get a lot of requests to explain how Microsoft SQL 2014 Licensing in a VMware environment works. More and more business critical workloads find their way to the Software Defined Data Center as a virtual workload. For virtual workloads licensing was a bit…
VMware Horizon FLEX Solution Brief
Last week VMware announced the availability of VMware Horizon FLEX, a policy-based, containerized desktop solution that allows IT administrators to create, secure, and manage local desktops to meet the needs of workers with their own computers, road warriors, and Mac users in the enterprise. Now VMware published…
Creating Workspace Portal 2.1 HA Cluster
Peter Bjork wrote a great post on how to create a Workspace Portal 2.1 HA cluster using internal databases. You’re probably wondering: ‘internal database? That is for testing purposes only?” VMware Workspace Portal 2.1 documentation recommends the use of an external instance of vPostgres when setting…
Want to play truth or dare with the Oracle Sales force? (Updated)
If you want to play truth or dare with the Oracle Sales Force now seems the time again! Back in Juli 2009 I had the first collisions with the Oracle Sales force about licensing Oracle on top of VMware environments. Instead of trying to help…
Translate VMware Workspace Portal
DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED BY VMWARE IN ANY WAY. DON’T DO OR USE THIS IN YOUR PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT! If you are like me, and want everything exactly the way you want it, then customizing colors and images just isn’t enough. Even the language should…
Top VMware Horizon support issues
VMware’s Support Insider, Rick Blythe, has put together a great list of the top VMware Horizon support issues by studying the support trends and identifying the top issues driving calls into the VMware support centers. So if you are a VMware Horizon admin or implementer supporting a single…
vCenter Server: Installable versus Appliance
vCenter Server: Installable versus Appliance. Often when designing an infrastructure there is a choice to be made between the two options. Go for the easy and fast to deploy appliance or go for the scalable and flexible installation. Where with the previous version of ESX…
Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect port licensing explained
When you are designing a Cisco UCS Unified Computing environment you will use several components which will work together. One key object in the whole chain is the Fabric Interconnect which connects the chassis, used storage and uplinks to Datacenter Switches like the Nexus 5000…
