In a previous blog post I started to study Terraform, and how to connect it to vCloud Director. This time, I will build my entire lab using the same automation tool.
Tag: vmware
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Quickly configure PhotonOS virtual machines with static IPs
Sometimes, we all need a large group of small virtual machines for our tests in vSphere. I tried in the past several linux distributions that claim to be small and easy to be deployed, but they usually failed in one of the two aspects, and it’s usually the ease of deployment. They are all fine if there’s a DHCP server around, but setting up a static IP configuration has always been a problem: mouse drivers in graphical mode are horrible, there’s little to no documentation about which distribution they are based on (in order to find out which commands and configuration files should be used), in summary, a living hell.
So, I decided to spend an afternoon doing some research and tests, and I came out with “my own” preferred procedure, based on VMware PhotonOS. It may be good for you too, or maybe not, depending on your own needs. I documented all the steps I’ve done, so that I (and you) can follow them start to end in order to obtain a working tiny VM with a static IP address.
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Disable direct file restore in Veeam vCloud Self-Service portal
The Veeam vCloud Self-Service portal (from here on, just portal) is a great solution for offereing self-service capabilities to vCloud Director tenants that want to manage by themselves backups and restores of their VMs and vApps. Service providers can already configure the service to allow tenants for different degrees of freedom, but there are some additional options that are not available in the configuration options.
I already blogged a few months ago about how to “Disable Items Restore options in Veeam Self-Service Backup Portal”, so that the ITEM tab can be completely removed from the interface. And looking at the number of visit this page has had so far, seems like several providers are alreday leveraging this “trick”.
Today however, we want to go a little bit further, and allow tenants to only download their files.
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Is Veeam replication compatible with VMware NSX?
Recently I’ve been asked by a colleague if Veeam Backup & Replication supports VMware NSX. The answer to me was pretty clear, since Veeam works at the vSphere layer and what is sees are “just” portgroups, regardless if they are simple, distributed, or NSX virtual wires. Nonetheless, I decided to do a quick test to prove it.
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Veeam Backup & Replication and vSAN integration deep dive
Veeam introduced specific support for vSAN back in mid-2014 as part of Veeam Backup & Replication v7.0 Update 4. More than support I should say integration, because the software is capable of leveraging the specific architecture of vSphere vSAN to improve the backups executed against this platform.
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Build a Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct cluster using VMware virtual machines
I’ve always been a fan of scale-out storage architecture, I’ve always said that The future of storage is Scale Out, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time studying software-only solutions like Ceph. The new solution from Microsoft, Storage Spaces Direct, seems like another great solution that will be soon available to us, so I decided to test it in my lab.
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The war for the public cloud is claiming its victims
Latest news about telecommunication companies and their struggles against giant cloud service providers show how the war for the public cloud is at its peak, and we are starting to see the first victims.
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Some notes from VMworld 2015
I’ve waited a week after VMworld ended in San Francisco before writing this post: there were too many blog posts from every blogger trying to cover any new announcement like a newspaper, and with the addition of news collected directly from the Expo Floor, sessions I’ve attended and other sources, the amount of info to digest required a bit of time. This post is not a recap of the event, just the things that I’ve seen and I found interesting. If something is not here, it may be that I’ve missed it rather than don’t liking it.