VMware has been pushing their vCloud product for quite a while now, but the uptake doesn’t seem to be there when compared to other hosted cloud services like AWS and Azure. With the recent addition of vCloud Air to the VMUG Advantage program, I decided to take a look at what it has to offer. I’ve dabbled with some AWS and Google stuff in the past, but I haven’t had the opportunity (or real desire to be honest) to play around with vCA. ...

One of the announcements from the US VMWorld 2015 that I feel hasn’t gotten a lot attention is the VMware Validated Designs. It’s been about a month since the new references were announced on the Office of the CTO blog, but aside from a bit of chatter at VMWorld and a handful of tweets, I haven’t heard much since. The idea behind it intrigues me and I figured what better way to learn about it than write a post about it. So, let’s get started. ...

I recently ran into an interesting error with Veeam, one which I haven’t seen before despite using it for years. The error in question: [Warning] XXXX all stuck VM snapshot consolidation attempts have failed (where XXXX is the VM name). Veeam has been pretty good at removing the snapshots for awhile now, especially since they introduced their Snapshot Hunter feature in v8, so I was a little surprised to see an error such as this. The first thing I did was try and consolidate the snapshots via the vSphere client but I ended up getting the ever so helpful error “An error occurred while consolidating disks: msg.snapshot.error-DISKLOCKED.” Great, at least now I could confirm the disk was being locked by something. ...

A few of months ago I started receiving emails from VMware reminding me that my VCP 5 was going to be expiring. With the changes that were introduced last year, I definitely did not want my certification to expire as it would result in me needing to not only sit two full exams, but to also attend an authorized class again ($$$). Luckily I’m able to take advantage of the Delta exam (2V0-621D) for existing VCPs. It is comparable to the full exam, except it is slimmed down (65 questions) and I believe there are a couple of areas not tested (although I can’t seem to confirm that anywhere online). The Delta exam was offered as a beta for a while, however I ended up not going through with it - mainly because kids are an incredible time sink, and before I knew it the Beta period was wrapping up. ...

With VMWorld 2015 in the books, I thought I would do a sort of round-up post to collect my thoughts and experiences as a whole. I wanted to wait a week or so to let everything soak in and give me time to reflect on the event. Keep in mind that this was my first VMWorld and I’m sure that there was tons that I missed. This is also based on what I was hoping to accomplish going into this, which won’t be the same for everyone. ...

One of the sessions I attended at VMWorld was a Veeam V9 technical deep dive. As a Veeam customer for about 5 years now I have seen quite a few improvements, but I think V9 will be one of their biggest updates to date. Some of the features that were introduced were: Veeam Cloud Connect Replication - Currently Veeam Cloud Connect is a baked-in extension that allows you to automatically backup to hosted 3rd party repositories. This was implemented as an easy way to get your backups offsite, but with the replication feature there is a fail-over component. It is no longer just a backup repository, but a way to have your VMs running in the cloud in the event of a failure. No VPN is require - all traffic is sent over SSL / TLS; Direct NFS Access - This feature allows Veeam to talk directly to NFS storage, bypassing the need to talk to the hypervisor. This should cut down on the amount of ‘chatter’ required during backups and should result in quicker backup times. This is one feature I am looking forward to testing; NetApp SnapMirror and SnapVault integration - Although I no longer run NetApp in production, I thought this was a cool feature. Veeam already has NetApp snapshot integration (i.e. It backs up the machines via a snapshot on the filer instead of running a snapshot against the VM), but this could allow you to run backups from your secondary storage, thus decreasing storage IO demands even more (and possibly allowing you to do your remote backups from a remote snapshot); Per-VM backup file chain - In order to get better dedupe rates, this option (available via a checkbox) will store each VM in a backup job as its own file. This might make managing backup files easier as well; Veeam Explorer for Oracle - I don’t use Oracle, but it is interesting to see a new Explorer being added to the family. Also of note is that this works for the Windows & Linux versions; Veeam Explorer for Active Directory - You can now recover GPOs (yay!), AD Integrated DNS records (yay!), and an ’experts only’ feature to recovery configuration partition records; Veeam Explorer for MS SQL - You can now do table level recovery (assuming there are no dependencies), SQL Objects (e.g. Triggers, stored procedures, etc.) as well as the ability to use a remote SQL Server for staging; Standalone Console - The console can now run on a Windows desktop - no longer need to RDP to the Veeam server; Direct File Restore - If the Veeam server is located in site A, but the repository and destination server are in site B, Veeam will now restore the file without the need to send all the traffic back to site A. This could have a huge impact with regards to remote file restores; BitLooker - Suppose you have a 1 TB VMDK and you delete 500 GB. Because those files still exist in the OS, your backup files won’t shrink. This feature goes through and analyzes the NTFS MFT to identify deleted data and exempt it from the backup and/or replication; Useless Data - The ability to exempt folders and files from backups. A good use case is a general purpose share where folks dump scans from photocopiers; Scale-out Backup Repository - This will be a huge feature in some environments as it introduces the ability to make storage pools out of various islands of storage. It is designed to scale out in terms of storage, as well as performance (i.e. write to multiple nodes at once). Overall the Veeam session was probably one of the highlights for me. Seeing all of these new features that are coming down the pipeline shortly has definitely caught my eye for a quick upgrade. ...

You’ll notice that all of these VMWorld posts are always up a day after the fact - that would be because there is a severe shortage of free time here. Even when you sit down at the bloggers table, it’s extremely hard to get work done because you have tech legends standing around you talking, sometimes even talking TO you. Anyways, a recap of yesterday: VMWorld kicked off their first hackathon to push forward their DevOps initiative. I didn’t spend any time over there, but from where I sat in the hang space it looked like it had pretty good activity for the first year of the event. I attended the vExpert Panel on Hyperconverged Infrastructure. The takeaway there is that HCI is definitely a use case scenario, and one of its biggest drawbacks is that you have to scale everything linearly (i.e. If I need more storage, but not as much compute, there isn’t a whole lot that can be done). Overall it seemed that about %20 of the audience either had implemented or will implement HCI in the next 12 months … Interesting stat. I was lucky enough to visit Steve Pantol who is the co-author of the excellent Networking for VMware Admins and got him to sign my book. Later on I met Nick Marshall and Grant Orchard, two out of three of the authors who worked on Mastering VMware vSphere 6. Josh Atwell couldn’t make it as he was busy receiving the 2015 VMUG Partnership Award. Incidentally I bumped into him when he joined my group of three folks for beer, and then later again on the street. Both times I was without my book though. I was planning on heading over to the Hang Space when I ran into Ariel Sanchez (@arielsanchezmor) who is part of the vBrownBag community. We ended up heading over together where I was introduced to yet more members of the community. He had a podcast to do (the LATAM vBrownBag) in Spanish, so I took the time to head over to the Solutions Exchange to talk to some vendors. I was back in the Hang Space to watch a live The Geek Whisperers podcast. That was very entertaining to see live. I also watched a talk by John Arrasjid (VCDX001) – that made me feel like I was in the company of royalty. John was super approachable and made sure to talk to anyone who was interested. Plus he had some circa 2003 VMware stickers he was giving out. ...

Yesterday started off with the second keynote of the event, which is traditionally more technical than the first day. The big highlights were: A partnership was announce with Microsoft regarding delivery and management of Windows 10 to end user devices. A new version of Identity Manager Some enhancements for Horizon 6.2 Overall very focused on End User Computing which brought about an interesting remark. CEO Pat Gelsinger was describing his 5 Imperatives for Digital Businesses, one of which was security. He used Edward Snowden as an example of why companies need to look at security from the endpoint up. ...

Day 1 was quit the experience, despite it being a ’lite’ day. Day 2 is when things really get going with sessions getting into full swing and the keynote address. The first session I attended was vCenter Server Appliance as a “first Choice” which was packed. Some of the highlights included covering the migration process from a traditional Windows install to the VCSA. The general consensus seems to be that there really isn’t much of a reason to run the Windows version any more as the appliance version is at least at parity, if not higher, for all of the features and minimums. Of note is that Update Manager still requires a Windows server to run on. In a later session by William Lam (@lamw) it was noted that future updates on the vSphere web client will include VUM functionality (note that you’ll still need the VUM server). ...

After completing my first day of my first VMworld, I thought it would be a good time to recap what my day looked like. Since I am on Eastern time, I was up early which meant that I had no problem getting on the 06:30 bus to Mosconne. That being said, there was a lineup (but quick) for registration despite getting there a few minutes before registration opened. The whole process didn’t take long though and within about 15 minutes I had my badge, bag, and was good to go. Tintri was also having their annual user conference (dubbed Tintricity) which I attended; while there I had great conversations with other Tintri users. Overall everyone seems to be quite happy with their Tintris as a) they just run as they should and b) they really are as simple as they claim to be. By the time I got back from Tintricity, vBrownBag was holding their panels which were kindly hosted by vUnderground. I opted to attend the careers panel which was very candid and had expert advice on all sorts of topics ranging from knowing what you are worth and knowing when to stay or go. This panel could have easily have gone on for twice as long. VMUndergroud had their kick off party which was great. Without even trying I was able to connect with so many folks ranging from vExperts, to VMware employees, and even some speakers. It is amazing how great these community events are. A word of advice: know your limits; if you still out too late you will feel it the next day. Off to day two. ...