Database Recovery Using a Zerto Failover Test

This guest post is by Ryan of VIRTUBYTES where you can find his back catalog of posts. Ryan writes about VMware products and a lot of related infrastructure technologies.

A few weeks back, we discussed Zerto’s ability to perform point-in-time file level restores directly from the replication journal. However, what if the data you need from 30 minutes ago isn’t readily compiled into a file or requires manual intervention to produce; such as a database backup or a PST export of Exchange mailbox items? Introducing Zerto Failover Tests for data recovery.

[…]

VSAN 6.2 study notes (Part 1) by @davidmirror

This guest post is by David Espejo, who blogs at vcloudopia.wordpress.com, where you can find his back catalogue of posts. David writes mainly in Spanish, but has an expanding English language section here. Find out more about the guest blogger program here.

Welcome!. This site is mainly written in spanish but i’m starting to open a new section for an english-speaking audience, touching different topics that -I consider- may have even more resonance in the broader reach that english language enable in this globalized world😉

As part of my preparation for the VCAP6-DCV Design exam, I red different official documents and came across with a bunch of notes written, mainly, in a very informal format that could be rapidly understood by me when I needed to review them. I have practical experience deploying VSAN since the creepy 1.0 version and I have witnessed the constant effort from the VMware team to enhance the product.

[…]

Tech Reckoning – The vBrownBag Unconference by @CTOAdvisor

 

This post is reproduced from Keith  Townsend‘s blog at The CTO Advisor.

I recently attended The Reckoning conference hosted by John Mark Troyer. John is the former program manager for VMware’s vExpert program. John has a reputation as a master community builder. He’s a sought after consultant for enterprise IT vendors looking to jump start or fine-tune their community programs. The Reckoning conference was the first in what I’d assume many conferences focused on community and IT careers. Prior to the official start of the event the vBrownBag team hosted an unconference.
[…]

The accounts of a few and guidance to many…

This post is reproduced from Mike Letshin‘s blog at The Solutions Architect.

Every once in a while there is a day that brings together people that are from down the street, across the country and around the world with an attempt to make the world a slightly better place.  While this sounds like quite the audacious goal, The Reckoning aims to:

  • Do Work That Matters
  • Beyond Technologist: Communicator, Businessperson
  • Be a Creator, Not An Operator

I have been lucky enough to be in attendance to represent Nexenta but also my history and background.  Kicking off the day with an unconference that was hosted by Cody Bunch and Alastair Cooke of vBrownbag we started with a generic list of topics that those in attendance thought were important to the community, the tech sector and hopefully others that could not attend.  I have done these before and the ideas tend not to get to flow past the group in attendance, and since the first break out, I volunteered to lead it seems only write to pass on some of the insight from those that may have been there, might want to go there or those that are just guessing but either way they are nuggets of knowledge.

[…]

Navigating the VMware’s forest of product offerings

This guest post is by Anthony Chow who blogs at http://cloudn1n3.blogspot.co.nz/, where you can find his back catalogue of posts. Find out more about the guest blogger program here.

Back in 2008 when I first started to learn about VMware’s server virtualization technology, it is very confusing on the different products and how they are related together.  There are the ESX, ESXi, vSphere and vCenter server and there are older products such as VMware server or the GSX server.  With Google we can find lots of articles on these products but the problem is that most of these articles do not have a date and since the VMware virtualization technology is advancing in such a high pace, we do not know if the information was current or relevant to which version of vSphere.
Now in 2015, can you tell me all the current VMware products and how they are related?
To look at VMware’s product offering, it is best to look at VMware’s vision on data center – Software Defined Data Center architecture.
Data Center comprises of these functions:

  1. Compute
  2. Storage
  3. Network
  4. Management

[…]

Applying the TSHOOT methodology to everything by @saintdle

This guest post is by Dean Lewis who blogs at www.educationalcentre.co.uk, where you can find his back catalogue of posts. We have open slots for guest bloggers, find out more about the guest blogger program here.

Last exam of the year

The past few months I’ve forced my head into revision for the three CCNP exams, with two down, I have TSHOOT left to do, and I’m aiming to pass before Christmas Day. Which is a nice goal to have, but when I have to recertify next year, It’ll be around 24th December.

But currently, Cisco only requires you to pass one of the three exams to keep the CCNP.
The TSHOOT is an interesting exam, compared with others. It contains a small number of multiple answer based questions, however the bulk of the exam is sat around a pre-defined and publicly available topology, where within a simulator you troubleshoot various support tickets.

CCNP_TSHOOT

[…]

Three levels of (in)dependence from Multicast in VXLAN by @davidmirror

This guest post is by David Espejo, who blogs at vcloudopia.wordpress.com, where you can find his back catalogue of posts. David writes in Spanish, so if you don’t speak Spanish be sure to use a browser that will translate for you. Find out more about the guest blogger program here.

It’s been a long time since my last post, and as always, I appreciate the opportunity that the vBrownBag community offers me to publish here. I’ve been on the road with a growing list of project deadlines due to a new consultant role that I accepted, but I’m learning a lot so I hope to share all that new knowledge here.

In this occasion I will talk about what has often been cited as the main barrier to VXLAN adoption: the requirement of Multicast in the physical network and the resulting operational burden of deploying and managing such requirement.

[…]

A look at SimpliVity – a Hyper-Convergence option by @vCloudernBeer

This guest post is by Anthony Chow who blogs at http://cloudn1n3.blogspot.co.nz/, where you can find his back catalogue of posts. Find out more about the guest blogger program here.

Compute, Network and Storage are the 3 pillars of a data center. Storage had been my weakest point in terms of knowledge and experience.

Today I had a great chat with Brian Knudtson (@bknudtson) who is very knowledgeable in different aspects of the technology field and had opened my mind in the area of “Hyper-convergence”. In this post, I am stepping out of my comfort zone again and try to venture into this area and take a look at this emerging and expanding market. In VMworld 2014, VMware announced a new product EVO:RAIL which reinforce the idea that this “Hyperconvergence” market has huge potential in the coming years.

[…]

VMware Recovery Manager – IP Customization by @btkrausen

This guest post is by Bryan Krausen who blogs at ITDiversified, where you can find his back catalogue of posts. Find out more about the guest blogger program here.

As mentioned in this article, there are many variables to take into consideration when deploying and configuring VMware Site Recovery Manager. When failing (or testing) your virtual machines from site to site, decisions must be made on what cluster will they start on, what priority will they be failed over, and what, if any, scripts will be executed after fail over has occurred. An equally important step is ensuring that the VMs can communicate on the correct network at the surviving site. VMware SRM has multiple ways of handling customization of a VM’s IP; one that is “automated” using IP Customization Rules and another that is completely manual, set configurations per VM.  Both are explained and shown below.

Note: Site Recovery Manager supports customization of the same guest operation systems which vSphere 5.5U2 supports. Check the document here for a support matrix.

[…]