The use of a “syslog” server is important in today’s data center. Most network and SAN switches, along with Unix and Linux servers are capable of sending logging information to a syslog server. The obvious reason for a syslog server is to centralize all of your logs. This enables you to troubleshoot issues more efficiently. […]
So, I use NewsGator to aggregate a BAZILLION feeds from several sources, blogs, like this one, actual news feeds and a bunch of VMware feeds. The VMware feeds are from the VI:OPS and VMTN forums. The VMTN forums allow you to create a custom feed by selecting the RSS link at the bottom right of each page or you can get […]
There are not huge differences between a vNetwork Standard Switch (vSwitch, vSS) and a vNetwork Distributed Switch (dvSwitch, vDS). The big thing is the concept of dvSwitches being centralized in vCenter and using the concept of compliance to assign a dvSwitch to a host. Both types of switches provide the following: can forward L2 frames can segment […]
Two words: Holy Crap! http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/08/an-awesome-peek-behind-the-scenes-of-getting-hardware-ready-for-vmworld-2009.html
Yes folks, it rears its ugly head again…Disk Alignment… If you have not read it yet, check out the whitepaper on disk alignment from VMware. First, chethan from VMware posted a great thread on VMTN about I/O performance in vSphere. The start of the thread talks about I/O, then leads into anice discussion about block size. A couple of weeks […]
Last week’s upgrade / outage of the VMware Capacity Planner Dashboard was a COMPLETE surprise to me. I was trying to access data on Friday with no success. Why? Because I just don’t pay attention to the notices on the front page of the dashboard. Low and behold, the Capacity Planner Dashboard is now available! It has […]
Just thought I would share these diagrams that I used in a recent training session. I used them to explain the differences in the storage protocols that may be used for a vStorage Cloud and how FCoE works. Click on the images for a larger view.
Monday was my first day at VMworld. I didn’t attend any sessions, but I did defend a design for my VCDX and I took the VCP4 Certification test. After that, I tried to attend the View Advanced Config and Troubleshooting Lab, but the line was huge, even for registered users. The one nice thing about […]
One of my pet peeves is that each virtual appliance coming out of VMware is that each different virtual appliance released by them is based on a different OS. Some of these do not even have documented methods for updating the OS. We all know that no matter what OS is running on a system, […]
I just finished reading Project California: a Data Center Virtualization Server – UCS (Unified Computing System) from Cisco. It gave an excellent take on Cisco’s view of how UCS benefits a datacenter. It also explains how new technologies from Intel, QLogic and Emulex all complement the Cisco gear. As a matter of fact, the first four chapters […]