Vmware

After a long day of working with Microsoft’s IPAM feature, I found that it might be possible to deploy my virtual servers with a static IP Address without going to look up an IP from an Excel spreadsheet or some other log. OK, let’s address the elephant in the room first. I know that there is this thing called DHCP and that I can already automatically assign an IP addresss, but with that solution, my IP Address could change from time to time. Typically, I create a DHCP Scope for servers that I’m just testing out, or need some dummy VMs with IP Addresses. This way I don’t have to worry about looking up stuff before deploying a VM that I’m going to destroy again shortly afterwards. I also use DHCP for PC’s, where I almost never care about the IP Address. ...

If you’ve been in a situation where you need to test connectivity, you’ve probably used the ping command. But what do you do when you’re trying to test connectivity from an ESXi host? Luckily there is a command called vmkping that will allow you to test from the host. The first thing that you need to do is to SSH into your ESXi host. Turn the SSH Service on from the Configuration –> Security Profile Tab. Then you can use your favorite ssh client and remote into your host. ...

VMware just announced their 2.0 version of Log Insight last week and for a logging product, it’s pretty cool. Let’s face it, most of us don’t get up every morning and rush to our computer to check out the newest logging software on the market, but VMware Log Insight is still neat. Installation The VMware Log Insight 2.0 product was shockingly easy to install for log management system. In my experience, logging software makes you jump through so many hoops that you need to be a Parkour Ninja to do successfully, and some of which I would consider to be a " Cold Butter IT Solution", but not in this case. The install comes in the form of an OVA and I won’t go through that process, but it’s very simple. ...

A secured, remote connection to your data is a requirement for almost all network designs these days. Mobility, telecommuting and late night help desk calls have created an environment that needs to have access to the local network in a secure fashion. vCNS Edge can provide these services to your virtual infrastructure. In previous posts, I’ve walked through installing vCNS Manager and installing vCNS Edge appliances. These are prerequisites to setting up SSL VPN on the VMware vCloud Network and Security appliance.. ...

If you’re a vSphere Administrator and have compliance regulations to deal with, vShield Endpoint might save you a lot of hassle. From my own experience with PCI-DSS, it was important to limit the cardholder data environment scope. The fewer devices that touch credit card data, the fewer items that had to be protected. In the same breath, it was important to have Anti-Virus, malware protection, firewall rules and file integrity monitoring. vShield Endpoint allows for all of these things to be handled in a single package. This post looks specifically at Trend Micro’s Deep Security Product. ...

In the first post in this series, we deployed the vShield Endpoint host driver and installed the Trend Micro Deep Security Manager on a Windows VM. Trend Micro Deep Security Appliance Deployment First, we need to login to the Deep Security Manager which is conveniently accessed as a web page. Go the the DNS name of the Manager that you entered during the setup wizard in part 1 of this series. Log in with the username and password that you specified. ...

The first parts of this series focused mainly on how to install the Trend Micro Deep Security product and how to prepare your environment. This post shows you a bit more of what can be accomplished with the product. vShield Endpoint Part 1 vSheidl Endpoint Part 2 Policies This is the guts of the product. All the configurations you’ve done up to this point have been leading up to a solution that can help secure your environment and possibly make it comply with a regulatory body. ...

Last week I attended the Virtualization Field Day 3 put on by the amazing staff at GestaltIT. One of the sessions was hosted by the folks at Atlantis Computing and they were giving us an overview of their Atlantis USX product. All travel expenses and incidentals were paid for by Gestalt IT to attend Virtual Field Day 3. This was the only compensation given. Atlantis USX Overview Before we get to the crux of the issue, a quick refresher on what Atlantis USX does. The USX product will utilize existing SAN, NAS and DAS and combine it with a server ram to do caching. The value proposition is that Atlantis USX can carve out RAM to be used as either a whole datastore (SUPER FAST) or combine it with existing storage and have it act as a cache. Keeping the cache so close to the processor without having to go across a bus or HBA, which can add additional latency, can be an important addition to a performance strapped storage solution. ...

High Availability is a great reason to virtualize your servers. It can help reduce downtime by automatically rebooting virtual machines in the case of a host failure. But, a relatively minor host issue should not cause the reboot of all of your virtual machines. This is where vCenter HA datastore heartbeats are useful. Let’s first look at a basic example of HA. Below is our normal environment with no failures. We have a few VMs on each host and the hosts are connected to a pair of datastores and a network switch. Now assume we have a host failure, we now need to have HA kick in and reboot the virtual machines on the failed host, over on the still working hosts. HA is working great and is a great feature, but lets take a look at what happens if the Management network were to fail. Without datastore heartbeats involved, the two hosts wouldn’t be able to communicate with each other over the network so the two of them would assume that the other was failed. But by looking at the example below we can see that even though the Management network is down, the virtual machines and their network is working just fine. This means that no outages are being noticed by end users so we DON’T want HA to kick in because the virtual machines will restart. ...

Good news for all of you eagerly awaiting the next iteration of the PernixData FVP software. Version 1.5 is now in Beta and you can request the download for your own testing from the following link http://info.pernixdata.com/Betaprogram. Disclosure: At the time of this writing I am a PernixPro which entitles me to early access to software, licenses or other merchandise. The thoughts expressed in this post are my own and have not been vetted by PernixData. ...