25 Jul 2016
By Yendis Lambert

Microsoft SQL Server on VMware vSphere Availability and Recovery Options

VMware, ,
Running Microsoft SQL Server on VMware vSphere offers many options for database availability and disaster recovery utilizing the best features from both VMware and Microsoft. For example, VMware vSphere vMotion and VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) can help to reduce planned downtime and balance workloads dynamically, and VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) can help to recover SQL Server databases in the case of host failure. At the application level, all SQL Server features and techniques are supported on vSphere, including AlwaysOn Availability Groups, AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances, database mirroring, and log shipping. SQL Server availability features can be used inside of a virtual machine just as you would…
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31 May 2016
By Yendis Lambert

VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 Deduplication, Compression, and Erasure Coding

VMware, ,
Hyper-Converged solutions featuring all-flash storage are the future as they continue to decrease in cost and offer dramatically better performance when compared to magnetic disks. Virtual SAN is optimized for modern all-flash storage with efficient near-line deduplication, compression, and erasure coding capabilities that lower TCO. Deduplication and compression enable considerable capacity savings across the entire Virtual SAN cluster — especially in environments where standard OS builds (templates and clones) are used and where there is abundant data commonality such as file shares. RAID-5/6 erasure coding reduces capacity consumption by as much as 50% versus RAID-1 (mirroring) with the same levels of availability for FTT=1 and FTT=2 Virtual SAN…
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31 May 2016
By Yendis Lambert

VMware Logon Monitor

VMware, ,
VMware Logon Monitor monitors Windows user logons and reports a wide variety of performance metrics intended to help administrators, support staff, and developers troubleshoot slow logon performance. Metrics include, but are not limited to, logon time, CPU/memory usage, and network connection speed. VMware Logon Monitor also receives metrics from other VMware products which provide even more clues about what is happening during the logon flow. While other VMware products are not required to benefit from VMware Logon Monitor, some VMware products may be active during user logon. The Horizon Agent, Horizon Persona Management, and App Volumes are examples and will…
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07 Feb 2016
By Yendis Lambert

VMware vExpert 2016

VMware,
The vExpert 2016 Announcement has been made by VMware and I’m honoured and pleased to say I have been awarded the accolade for the fourth year running. I would like the thank Cory (@vCommunityGuy) and the team at VMware for all their hard work vetting the individuals that apply. Looking forward to working with many vExperts and attending the many VMware events throughout 2016.
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19 Dec 2015
By Yendis Lambert

Installing ESXi Using PXE – VMware vSphere 6.0

VMware,
You can use the preboot execution environment (PXE) to boot a host. Starting with vSphere 6.0, you can PXE boot the ESXi installer from a network interface on hosts with legacy BIOS or using UEFI. ESXi is distributed in an ISO format that is designed to install to flash memory or to a local hard drive. You can extract the files and boot by using PXE. PXE uses Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) to boot an operating system over a network. PXE booting requires some network infrastructure and a machine with a PXE-capable network…
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17 Dec 2015
By Yendis Lambert

Implementation Considerations for VMware App Volumes in a Citrix XenDesktop Environment

Citrix, VMware,
App Volumes works well with both Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp, either individually or in a combined XenDesktop and XenApp implementation. The same AppStacks that attach to XenDesktop virtual desktops to deliver applications to users can also attach to XenApp servers to deliver applications. To learn more about using App Volumes in a XenApp environment, read Implementation Considerations for VMware App Volumes in a Citrix XenApp Environment. This paper focuses only on App Volumes in a XenDesktop environment
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16 Dec 2015
By Yendis Lambert

Oracle Real Application Clusters on VMware Virtual SAN

VMware, ,
This solution addresses the common business challenges discussed in the previous section that CIOs face today in an online transaction processing (OLTP) environment that requires availability, reliability, scalability, predictability and cost-effective storage, which helps customers design and implement optimal configurations specifically for Oracle RAC Database on Virtual SAN. Key Results The following highlights validate that Virtual SAN is an enterprise-class storage solution suitable for Oracle RAC Database: Predictable and highly available Oracle RAC OLTP performance on Virtual SAN Simple design methodology that eliminates operational and maintenance complexity of traditional SAN Sustainable solution for enterprise Tier-1 Database Management System (DBMS) application…
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15 Nov 2015
By Yendis Lambert

VMware Virtual SAN 6.1 Stretched Cluster Bandwidth Sizing Guidance

VMware
The purpose of this document is to explain how to size bandwidth requirements for Virtual SAN in Stretched Cluster configurations. This document only covers the Virtual SAN network bandwidth requirements. In Stretched Cluster configurations, two data fault domains have one or more hosts, and the third fault domain contains a witness host or witness appliance. In this document each data fault domain will be referred to as a site.Virtual SAN Stretched Cluster configurations can be spread across distances, provided bandwidth and latency requirements are met. The bandwidth requirement between the main sites is highly dependant on the workload to be run…
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13 Nov 2015
By Yendis Lambert

Virtualizing PerformanceCritical Database Applications in VMware vSphere 6.0

VMware, ,
The performance parity between bare-metal and virtualised servers is an accepted fact today. But what about the most demanding applications, such as monster virtual machines running databases and transaction processing applications? Experiments in this paper demonstrate that VMware vSphere 6.0 virtual machines run out of the box at 90% of the performance of native systems even for the most demanding workloads at the highest throughput levels. Download the Performance Study Technical Whitepaper
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05 Sep 2015
By Yendis Lambert

20 VMware VMworld 2015 Sessions now available

VMware,
As you know one of my favourite vendor conferences took place in San Francisco this week which was VMware VMworld 2015, if you were unfortunate not to attend then Eric Sloof has created the below list of 20 sessions now available on Youtube.  My other favourite is Citrix Synergy 2015 which will be in Orlando :-) EUC5404 Deliver High Performance Desktops with VMware Horizon and NVIDIA GRID vGPU EUC5020 The “Snappy” Virtual Desktop User Experience EUC6807 The Future of End User Computing HBC4849 vCloud Air 2015 - Getting Started with Hybrid Cloud HBC6629 No App is an Island INF4528 vCenter Server…
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