What is a VMware Technical Account Manager
Almost three years ago I joined VMware to work as a Technical Account Manager or TAM. When I joined, I had no clue what a TAM does. I’ve heard about TAMs before. Microsoft has TAMs, Cisco has ’em too. But as I learned quickly, a…
How to upgrade vCenter server appliance to 6.5
I know that vSphere 6.5 is out for some time now, but I did not got to upgrading my own homelab up until last week. So last week I started the upgrade and I ran into two situations in wich I had to do a…
vRealize Network Insight Search Cheatsheet
One thing that I absolutely love about vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) is that the entire database is open by default and that the search bar is powered by Elastic Search. That means that you can type in pretty advanced search queries and basically query everything…
Building a cheap alternative for CrashPlan for Home
I use CrashPlan Home for all my off-site backups of my client devices. It’s a pretty neat and usable backup client which works on Mac OS, Linux and Windows. From the client you can restore individual files and it runs as a service for continuous…
HCI – State of the Union
HyperConverged Infrastructure or HCI is hot. Or not? I notice that when I’m talking to my customers, all of them are looking at HCI in one form or another. Though some of them end up going for the “old ways” because they don’t see the…
The end of vCenter for Windows. Why invest time now?
As many of you probably know vCenter for Windows will be deprecated with the next major release. This means you still have time before you have no choice but to upgrade to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). But why wait with upgrading? If the technical benefits that the…
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…
vROPS Tenant App for vCloud Director
Earlier today Erik pointed me to something I totally missed: vROPS Tenant App for VCD. It’s already out there for a month! You probably guessed what is is, since the name gives a lot of clues: It is a tenant app that you can use…
vRealize Suite just became a lot easier with Lifecycle Manager
The waiting is over! VMware released the magic sauce, vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager or vRSLCM is a standard part of the vRealize Suite and it is included with a vRealize Suite license. vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager allows you to quickly install and configure a…
vRealize Business for Cloud report scheduling
One of the many new cool features of VMware vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 is report scheduling. You can now schedule and email a custom report or the out-of-the-box reports to a set of recipients on daily, weekly or monthly basis. In this post I will…
VMworld – Making the most of your time
VMworld Europe is next week! This is always the highlight of my year, mostly for 2 reasons: 1) all kinds of awesome new virtualization technology is either announced or released, and reason 2) my favorite; the best minds of the virtualization community gather and share…
VMworld 2017 Hot News – Building Tomorrow
And just as you think it cannot be better, faster and become more interesting you find out it can! VMware announced several new updates to its products on VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas. According to Pat Gelsinger, CEO VMware, VMware’s goal is to connect people…
Why you want to discover services in your environment
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could discover services running in each VM and then automatically build relationships or dependencies between services from different VMs, based on the network communication? Only then could you answer the following questions: 1. Which services are running on my VM’s?…
How to solve your problem in 9 steps
One of the most important things in troubleshooting in general is that you follow a system or workflow. You have to attack the problem methodically and analytical. There’s nothing worse than trying all kinds of things and realize suddenly that it works and not knowing…
Build Your Own NAS
So you want storage for your home lab, but you don’t want to spend $1.000,- on an empty NAS box and still have to purchase disks for capacity. How about a “build your own”? There are numerous free and semi-free alternatives in the market. You…