Trending Topics

Implement and configure AWS Backup for VMware Cloud on AWS VM workloads

Image
In our previous post we saw the design of the AWS Backup on VMC. In this post we’re going through the implementation steps As per the design and best practice, we are going to use the ENI for the Backup traffic CREATE A VPC ENDPOINT  TO CREATE AN INTERFACE ENDPOINT FOR AN AWS SERVICE 1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc    2. In the navigation pane, choose Endpoints 3. Choose Create endpoint 4. Name the endpoint   5. For Service category, choose AWS services 6. For Service name, search “ Backup ” and select “ backup-gateway ” service from the dropdown 7. For VPC, select the VPC which we used for SDDC deployment and extension 8. To create an interface endpoint for Amazon S3, you must “uncheck” Additional settings, Enable DNS name. This is because Amazon S3 does not support private DNS for interface VPC endpoints 9. For  Subnets , select one subnet per Availability Zone which we used for SDDC VMC selection  10. For Security group , sel

Explore vsphere 6.0

VVols
Perhaps the most wanted feature in vSphere 6 is Virtual Volumes, or VVOLs. VVOLs extends the VMware software-defined storage (SDS) story to its storage partners, and completely changes the way its hypervisor consumes storage; it radically changes how storage is presented, consumed and managed by the hypervisor. No longer is virtual machine (VM) storage bound by the attributes of the LUN, as each VM disk (VMDK) can have its own policy-driven SLA. VMware has a passel of storage vendors on board to equip its storage, with the ability to offer VVOLs storage to the VMware hypervisor. I'm sure this feature will get much press and customer attention in the coming days.

vMotion
vSphere vMotion just got 10 times better, and a lot more interesting. For one thing, it supports live VM migration  across vCenter servers, and over long distances. It used to support round trip times (RTTs) of 10 ms, but now supports RTTs of 100 ms. A ping from Portland, Ore., to Boston, Mass., is 90 ms; so, in theory, you could move a live VM across the entire United States using vMotion. I'm not sure which of these I find more interesting: long distance vMotion, Cross vCenter vMotion or how shared storage will span a continent.

Fault Tolerance
Multi-processor fault tolerance is a feature unique to the VMware hypervisor. It allows a workload to run simultaneously on two different ESXi servers; if a server or VM goes down, the other one will continue running the load uninterrupted. This feature, until today, only supported one vCPU; now it can protect a four-vCPU VM in the Enterprise Plus version, and a 2-vCPU VM in other editions. VMware stressed the fact that to be effective, a 10Gb connection is required between the ESXi servers. From what the engineers have told me, this required a major rewrite of the FT code base.

Bigger VMs
The VMware VMs have gotten even bigger. VMware has doubled the number of vCPUs a VM can have from 64 to 128, and has quadrupled the amount of RAM from 1TB to 4TB. This opens up some unique possibilities; consider, for example, resource-intensive applications, such as the SAP HANA memory database.

As more powerful hosts come online, vSphere will be ready to support them, because an ESXi host is capable of supporting 480 CPU and 6TB of RAM.

vSphere now supports 64-node clusters. This change has been a long time coming, and it's good that VMware finally is supporting larger clusters. This should be a big boon to the 1,000-plus VMware customers running Virtual SAN.

Instant Clone 
VMware has a feature called Instant Clone that I'm dying to try in my lab, as it creates clones 10 times faster than vSphere does presently. This is a welcome relief for all the test and dev shops that have been hampered, waiting for a clone to finish.
A new feature in the stack is vSphere Content Library. For those who have ISOs, VM templates and virtual appliances stored in multiple locations, this will be a nice central repository that can be synchronized and accessed from different sites and vCenter instances. In its initial release, vSphere Content Library has basic versioning and a publish-and-subscribe mechanism to keep things in sync.

On the network side, vSphere now supports Network I/O control on a per-VM basis, and can reserve bandwidth to guarantee SLAs.

Ready for VDI
VMware has also thrown in support for NVIDIA GRID vGPU, which will allow an individual VM to take advantage of all the goodness of a physical vGPU housed in an ESXi server. vSphere has had vDGA for a while, but whereas it tied a GPU to one guest, vGPU allows the GPU to share among eight. A lot of the people I've talked to have been waiting for this feature.

This change shows how serious VMware is about the virtual desktop infrastructure market, as it joins soft 3D, vSGA and vDGA as a way to make desktop VMs more performant.

As I mentioned before, this release is, for the most part, evolutionary rather than revolutionary -- and there's nothing wrong with that. Yes, it has VVOLs, and it might be the game changer the community believes it to be. But I also hope that people finally fully utilize fault tolerance to protect critical applications, use long-distance vMotion to move workloads as needed and create some truly monstrous VMs to run their in-memory databases.

vSphere 6 demonstrates that VMware wants to maintain its leadership in hypervisor development.

Popular posts from this blog

HOW TO EDIT THE BCD REGISTRY FILE

Image
The BCD registry file controls which operating system installation starts and how long the boot manager waits before starting Windows. Basically, it’s like the Boot.ini file in earlier versions of Windows. If you need to edit it, the easiest way is to use the Startup And Recovery tool from within Vista. Just follow these steps: 1. Click Start. Right-click Computer, and then click Properties. 2. Click Advanced System Settings. 3. On the Advanced tab, under Startup and Recovery, click Settings. 4. Click the Default Operating System list, and edit other startup settings. Then, click OK. Same as Windows XP, right? But you’re probably not here because you couldn’t find that dialog box. You’re probably here because Windows Vista won’t start. In that case, you shouldn’t even worry about editing the BCD. Just run Startup Repair, and let the tool do what it’s supposed to. If you’re an advanced user, like an IT guy, you might want to edit the BCD file yourself. You can do this
Read more

DNS Scavenging.

                        DNS Scavenging is a great answer to a problem that has been nagging everyone since RFC 2136 came out way back in 1997.  Despite many clever methods of ensuring that clients and DHCP servers that perform dynamic updates clean up after themselves sometimes DNS can get messy.  Remember that old test server that you built two years ago that caught fire before it could be used?  Probably not.  DNS still remembers it though.  There are two big issues with DNS scavenging that seem to come up a lot: "I'm hitting this 'scavenge now' button like a snare drum and nothing is happening.  Why?" or "I woke up this morning, my DNS zones are nearly empty and Active Directory is sitting in a corner rocking back and forth crying.  What happened?" This post should help us figure out when the first issue will happen and completely avoid the second.  We'll go through how scavenging is setup then I'll give you my best practices.  Scavenging s
Read more

AD LDS – Syncronizing AD LDS with Active Directory

Image
First, we will install the AD LDS Instance: 1. Create and AD LDS instance by clicking Start -> Administrative Tools -> Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services Setup Wizard. The Setup Wizard appears. 2. Click Next . The Setup Options dialog box appears. For the sake of this guide, a unique instance will be the primary focus. I will have a separate post regarding AD LDS replication at some point in the near future. 3. Select A unique instance . 4. Click Next and the Instance Name dialog box appears. The instance name will help you identify and differentiate it from other instances that you may have installed on the same end point. The instance name will be listed in the data directory for the instance as well as in the Add or Remove Programs snap-in. 5. Enter a unique instance name, for example IDG. 6. Click Next to display the Ports configuration dialog box. 7. Leave ports at their default values unless you have conflicts with the default values. 8. Click N
Read more