HDD failed in vSAN cluster (Softlayer) – how to replace it

In this article I would like to show you how to replace failed HDD (or SSD) drive in VMware vSAN cluster running on Softlayer Cloud. 1. Open web-client and navigate to: Hosts and Clusters -> choose Cluster -> Manage -> Settings -> Virtual SAN -> Disk Management You will see all… Continue reading

Cross site vMotion, Default Gateway and TCP/IP stacks

Possibility of cross vCenter vMotion is quite popular among customers. But the thing is that most of the times the vCenters, or the environments managed by those vCenters, are in different sites or locations. This simply means they do not share same vMotion network. Which means vMotion traffic needs to… Continue reading

SoftLayer local disk performance SATA/vSAN/SSD

SoftLayer local disk performance SATA/vSAN/SSD What disk performance you can expect from local drives in Softlayer with VMware vSphere6, vSAN & local SATA or SSD drives? This article is here to help you see and decide if performance will be enough for your needs. I have 3 hosts with: hardware… Continue reading

Updated: Building vSphere 6 with VSAN on IBM Softlayer: Part 4 – Configuring VSAN on Softlayer

UPDATE: I do not recommend using this guide for any future deployment. The information included is quite outdated and is not relevant anymore. The article should only be used as reference for some commands. My recommendation is to check  IBM’s official offering of VMware on IBM Cloud. A lot of… Continue reading

Building vSphere 6 with VSAN on IBM Softlayer: Part 3 – Configuring Networking on Softlayer

Now when we have ESXis installed and vCenter server deployed, we need to do some patching and, of course, networking config. First, it is always a good idea to have your vSphere environment up to date. The thing is that Softlayer uses Images to provision servers and those images are not… Continue reading

Building vSphere 6 with VSAN on IBM Softlayer: Part 2 – Ordering vCenter server on Softlayer

This is the second part of Building vSphere 6 with VSAN on IBM Softlayer series. In the first part we’ve discussed how to order bare metal server with ESXi 6 installed. In this part I will show how to order vCenter Server 6 on a Windows Cloud Instance (aka CI –… Continue reading

Building vSphere 6 with VSAN on IBM Softlayer: Part 1 – Ordering ESXi hosts on Softlayer.

I am recently spending a lot of time with IBM Softlayer, in particular I am building vSphere running inside Softlayer. In this series of articles I want to show how you can build an environment with vSphere 6 and VSAN inside Softlayer. One important note: although I work in IBM, my view is form… Continue reading