Tutorials Archives - Page 3 of 4

VMware Virtual SAN 6 – Setup and Configuration [Part 2]

June 2, 2016August 14, 2015 by Daniel

In this post I will go through enabling and configuring VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) 6 cluster within vSphere. Virtual SAN is embedded directly in the hypervisor and does not require any additional software to be installed.

Deployment of VMware vRealize Operations Manager

February 18, 2016June 8, 2015 by Daniel

vRealize Operations Manager (vROM/vROPS) gives you visibility into the performance and health of your virtual infrastructure. The bad thing about virtualization is how easy it is to accumulate over-provisioned virtual machines. When your environment grows the numbers can really be staggering. With vROM you can find these VMs and really tweak your environment making it more lean and resource efficient. vROM also has the ability to ensure compliance with IT policies, regulatory requirements, and smart alerting. Basically vRealize Operations Manager will take your structure data like performance metrics and give you a unified interface of analytics. Here is my documented deployment of vRealize Operations Manager 6.0.1 in my lab environment.

Planning and Reading:

VMware vRealize Operations Manager – This is all the documentation in one place!
vRealize Operations Manager Sizing Guidelines – VMware KB2093783
vRealize Operations Manager vApp Deployment and Configuration Guide
Exploring New vRealize Operations Capabilities – VMware Blog, David Davis
If you are deploying vROM in your lab and need a license I highly recommend you check out the VMUG Advantage subscription.

Upgrading Windows based vCenter 5.x to 6

February 18, 2016April 23, 2015 by Daniel

For this post I will go through upgrading my Windows based vCenter from 5.5 to vCenter 6. VMware has really made the installer process lean. I would even go out on a limb and say “easy”! vCenter 6 introduces the Platform Services Controller which changes the architecture of vCenter down to two components. The graphic below shows my environment before the upgrade and after:

My setup is very simple as I have all vCenter 5.5 components on a single Server 2012 virtual machine. I have ran through the upgrade multiple times and have yet to run into anything major. To find what your environment will look like check out the VMware vCenter Server 6.0 Deployment Guide.

vCenter Server Appliance Upgrade from 5.x to 6.0

March 16, 2016April 3, 2015 by Daniel

The upgrade process of vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) version 5.x to 6.0 isn’t truly a upgrade but more of a migration. You are basically deploying a second vCSA that will migrate the hosts/inventory/IP address from the old to the new. You can only upgrade vCSA versions 5.1U3 and 5.5. The 6.0 vCSA is still based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 and now has the the same mins/max as the Windows installed version.

vCenter 6 Appliance vs Windows

Before You Start:

There is some prep work you need to perform before doing the migration:

Pick a host and ensure it has a standard switch with a vmnic uplink. Because Distributed Switches is a vCenter function it wants to perform the upgrade on a standard switch.
Rename your current vCenter VM in the inventory so the new VM can be created as the same name. Otherwise the vCSA folders on the LUNs will not match.
Have at least two available LUNs, one for your current vCSA and one for the new vCSA. Since you will want to deploy the new one with the same name they have to be on different LUNs
The installation media is a .ISO instead of a .OVA. You will need to burn it to a disc, extract it, or mount it.