NSX vSphere – Getting Started

This document provides step-by-step examples that demonstrate how to set up the following network services in NSX for vSphere: Logical Switches Logical Distributed Router Distributed Firewalls Logical Centralized Routers (Edge) with Dynamic Routing and with many-to-one NAT Logical Load Balancers (Edge) At the end, you'll have the following logical network deployed in your lab: L2 bridging, VPN, and service composer are not covered in this document. Likewise, integrations with third party vendors, such as Palo Alto Networks, Symantec and F5, are not covered here.
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CTXANALYZER Utility

If you're a sysadmin who manages multiple Citrix XenApp Farms then this utility is for you. Introducing the NEW CtxAnalyzer which is a great utility for displaying all the information you need about your Citrix XenApp servers in one screen. Now with multiple Citrix XenApp farms view - export information of multiple farms in multiple domains to Excel or HTML files. So you may be asking yourself what information does this tool display:- Server Status: Online or Offline. Network Configuration: IP Address, Subnet, Gateway, DNS. Windows Information:: Windows Version and Platform (x86/x64), Windows Install Date,  Windows Last Boot Date and Machine…
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VMware EVO: RAIL – User Guide

VMware® EVO:RAIL™ is the first hyper-converged infrastructure appliance powered 100% by VMware’s compute, networking, storage, and management software. EVO:RAIL Deployment, Configuration, and Management streamlines initial setup and ongoing operations including updates with zero downtime and automatic scale-out. EVO:RAIL is fully deployed in minutes, once racked, cabled and powered on. To ensure the correct functioning of EVO:RAIL and an optimal end-to-end user experience, understanding the recommendations and requirements in this User Guide is essential. Availability of resources and workload is critical for any environment, but even more so in a hyper-converged environment as compute, networking, storage, and management are provided on…
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VMware App Volumes Deployment Guide

This deployment guide presents a high-level overview of VMware App Volumes. It describes App Volumes capabilities, architecture, and implementation requirements and addresses frequently asked high-level questions about deploying an App Volumes solution. App Volumes is a real-time application delivery and lifecycle management tool.  Enterprises can use App Volumes to build real-time application delivery systems that ensure that applications are centrally managed. Applications are delivered to desktops through virtual disks. There is no need to modify desktops or applications themselves, and the App Volumes solution can be scaled out easily and cost-effectively, without compromising end-user experience. App Volumes complements the VMware End-User Computing portfolio by integrating with…
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VMware App Volumes Fundamentals

This eLearning course on VMware App Volumes will provide you a fundamental understanding of App Volumes and how it can be used for real-time application delivery with life cycle management. The course will start with an overview of App Volumes, its components, features, and benefits. Next, you will take a look at the hardware and software pre-requisites and the network and security considerations for installing App Volumes. Finally, you will see how to provision App Volumes and the process for installing and configuring App Volumes. You will also gain an understanding of how App Volumes helps create and manage AppStacks.…
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vSphere Replication Calculator

Storage and network bandwidth requirements can increase when using vSphere Replication. Besides the network transfers of replicated data from the primary site to the vSphere Replication server, and the transfers from the vSphere Replication server to the ESXi host, the host writes the data to storage once and then, due to the use of redo log snapshots, reads the data back and rewrites it to storage. The amount of network bandwidth that vSphere Replication requires to replicate virtual machines efficiently depends on several factors in your environment. Network-Based storage Size of dataset Data change rate Recovery Point Objective (RPO) Link…
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VMware Certified Professional 6 – Desktop (VCP6-DT)

VMware has released the Certified Professional 6 – Desktop certification. The VCP6-DT certification is designed for System Engineers and Desktop Virtualization Specialists with a foundation in vSphere implementation and administration. Earning this certification validates your skills implementing, installing, and configuring a VMware Horizon with View 6.x environment. Download the VCP6-Desktop Exam Blueprint
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SCSI Bus Sharing on SCSI Cards

Recently working with a monster VM I had a request to add more capacity after looking at the properties of this machine I noticed that it had almost reach the maximum number of possible hard drives (SCSI devices) that could be allocated due to the amount of capacity and RDM's required.  So based on this I thought I would write a blog post on why there is this limitation. Now lets just take a quick look at the wide SCSI bus which is capable of serving SCSI ID 0 to 15 which means 16 SCSI targets. As you know (if you've dealt…
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NSX Design Guide v2.1

IT organizations have gained significant benefits as a direct result of server virtualization. Server consolidation reduced physical complexity, increased operational efficiency, and the ability to dynamically re-purpose underlying resources to quickly and optimally meet the needs of increasingly dynamic business applications are just a handful of the gains that have already been realized. Now, VMware’s Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) architecture is extending virtualization technologies across the entire physical data center infrastructure. VMware NSX, the network virtualization platform, is a key product in the SDDC architecture. With VMware NSX, virtualization now delivers for networking what it has already delivered for…
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VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.8 First Look

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager made it’s debut at  VMworld 2014 in San Francisco.  Over the past few weeks a fellow vEvangelist Jason Boche has put together a short series of videos highlighting what’s new and also providing a first look at SRM management through the new web client plug-in. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.8 Part 1 VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.8 Part 2 VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.8 Part 3 I hope you enjoy Thanks go to Jason for producing these short clips.
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