05 Sep 2015
By Yendis Lambert

What’s New in VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1

VMware, , ,
Site Recovery Manager provides unique capabilities to create, maintain, and non-disruptively test disaster recovery plans without the need for manual runbooks. The ability to automate the disaster recovery planning, maintenance, and testing process enables significant operational efficiencies. VMware has expanded the capabilities of Site Recovery Manager with the new version 6.1 release, which delivers unprecedented levels of protection and functionality as well as new use cases through the addition of capabilities such as storage policy based protection groups, support for stretched storage with orchestrated vMotion, and enhanced integration with VMware NSX. This paper will provide an overview of the new…
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09 Jul 2015
By Yendis Lambert

VMware vSphere 6 Metro Storage Cluster Recommended Practices

VMware, , ,
VMware vSphere® Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) is a specific configuration within the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). These configurations are commonly referred to as stretched storage clusters or metro storage clusters and are implemented in environments where disaster and downtime avoidance is a key requirement.   This best practices document was developed to provide additional insight and information for operation of a vMSC infrastructure in conjunction with VMware vSphere. This paper explains how vSphere handles specific failure scenarios, and it discusses various design considerations and operational procedures. For detailed information about storage implementations, refer to documentation provided by the appropriate…
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22 Jun 2015
By Yendis Lambert

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 6.0

VMware,
vCenter Converter supports many source physical machines, including Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Server and Linux. It also supports third-party disk images from Microsoft Hyper-V, Virtual Server and Virtual PC; Parallels Desktop; Symantec System Recovery; Norton Ghost; Acronis and StorageCraft.  Multiple simultaneous conversions enable large-scale virtualization implementations. Quiescing and snapshotting of the guest operating system on the source machine before migrating the data ensures conversion reliability. Hot cloning makes conversions non-disruptive, with no source server downtime or reboot. Sector-based copying enhances cloning and conversion speed. Support for cold cloning (conversion that requires server downtime and reboot) is available, in addition…
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20 Jun 2015
By Yendis Lambert

Deployment and Design Considerations for VMware Mirage

VMware,
This paper describes best practices for planning a VMware Mirage deployment. It addresses the primary phases of a Mirage deployment, including sizing, design, and the gathering of environmental data. System Architecture Mirage provides centralized image management for physical desktops and VMware Horizon® 6 with View virtual desktops. Mirage provides enhanced endpoint backup, recovery, updates, and hardware and operating system migration. These functions centralize endpoint content in the data center for management and protection, download images to endpoints, and optimize the transfer of data. Interactions between the data center and managed endpoints are as follows: Each endpoint has a Mirage client installed, which…
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18 Apr 2015
By Yendis Lambert

Enable SSH on VMware ESXi 5.5 via vSphere Client

VMware,
To enable SSH on your VMware ESXi 5.5 host you can do this directly on the host or alternatively you can do this using the VMware vSphere Client. Using the vSphere client click on the "Configuration Tab" Now click on the "Security Profile" option in the Software pain (on the left hand side) Now click on the "Properties" tab which will open up Remote Access Select the SSH Service (which is currently stopped) and click on the options button.  Now select the startup policy you require and then click on the Start button. You should now be able to access your VMware ESXi host…
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06 Mar 2015
By Yendis Lambert

VMware VCS to VCSA Converter

VMware, , , ,
The VCS to VCSA Converter Appliance is the winning idea from the 2013 Fling Contest. It allows customers to migrate from Windows vCenter Server with an External Microsoft SQL Server Database to the vCenter Server Appliance with an embedded vPostgres database. The Fling migrates the vCenter database, roles, permissions, privileges, certificates and inventory service. The target appliance will run at the same IP address as the source vCenter. System Requirements vCenter Server running on Windows - vSphere 5.5 or greater The Windows vCenter Server and the vCenter Server Appliance should be running the same version (e.g. vCenter Server Windows 5.5u1…
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03 Mar 2015
By Yendis Lambert

Vote For The Best Virtualization Blogs at vSphere-Land.com

VMware
Every year Eric Siebert creates a list of all the great virtualisation blogs that are created and constantly updated.  This event allows the community to vote for the best blogs out there.  As you can imagine running one of these blogs takes time and plenty of effort to make sure the content is relevant. So now that you’ve arrived at my site and reading this blog post please take the time to vote for my site "Northtech Consulting (Yendis Lambert)" using the link below.    Thank you for taking the time to vote
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24 Feb 2015
By Yendis Lambert

vSphere 6 Feature Walkthroughs

VMware
Explore the features of VMware vSphere 6, the industry-leading server virtualization platform that lets you virtualize applications with confidence. vCenter Server Install - This series provides to instructions on installing various vCenter 6.0 components.  vCenter Server Upgrades- Seamlessly upgrade from from vCenter Server and vCenter Server 5.x versions to version 6.0 with these walkthroughs. vSphere Data Protection - With this set of walkthroughs, learn how to perform vital activities that vSphere Data Protection 6.0 enables you to carry out. vSphere Replication - With these walkthroughs, learn how configure replication and recover a virtual machine.  
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14 Feb 2015
By Yendis Lambert

Virtualized Hadoop Performance with VMware vSphere® 6 on High-Performance Servers

VMware, ,
Large advances have been made in hardware and every level of the software stack since the virtualized Hadoop tests published in April 2013. This paper shows how to take advantage of these advances to achieve maximum performance. The cluster size remains at 32 two-processor 2U hosts; however, the processor, memory, network, and storage capabilities are all roughly doubled from those reported in the earlier paper. The performance of native and several VMware vSphere® 6 virtualized configurations were compared using the same TeraSort application suite as before. It was found that the more powerful hosts give a larger advantage to multi-VM…
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14 Feb 2015
By Yendis Lambert

VMware vSphere Replication 6.0

VMware, ,
VMware vSphere® Replication™ is a virtual machine data protection and disaster recovery solution. It is fully integrated with VMware vCenter Server™ and VMware vSphere Web Client, providing host-based, asynchronous replication of virtual machines. vSphere Replication is a proprietary replication engine developed by VMware that is included with VMware vSphere Essentials Plus Kit and higher editions of VMware vSphere, VMware vSphere with Operations Management™ editions, and VMware vCloud® Suite editions. vSphere Replication use cases • Data protection and disaster recovery within the same site and across sites • Data center migration • Replication engine for VMware vCloud Air™ Disaster Recovery •…
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