Create new NFS datastore for vSphere with NUTANIX

Recently we got access to a 16-node Nutanix cluster with vSphere on top of it. The datastore which was supposed to be used by us was created with Replication Factor 2 and we decided to create another one with RF=3, which provide higher level of data availability by keeping 3… Continue reading

Warning: Extending virtual disks in ESXi 6.0 can pause your VM!

alert

As  I’m planning to deploy ESXi 6.0 in our environment, I’m doing research for the all issues or behavioral changes coming with vSphere 6.0. I have discovered one serious change in behavior which came with ESXi 6.0 and I don’t think it was announced anywhere and it can cause outage in your… Continue reading

Security issue after updating to vCenter 6.0

I did a crazy thing last week, I decided to update our vCenter appliance (VCSA) from version 5.5U3a to version 6.0 Update1 3040890. I was surprised how flawlessly it went. It was finished in couple of hours, “almost” everything was working as expected, so big success 🙂 Until users started… 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 The information included is quite outdated and is not relevant anymore.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

VMs crashing after snapshot consolidation in ESXi 5.5 Update 3

Those of you who follow social media or simply have ESXi 5.5 Update 3 and use snapshots, are already aware of the problem described in VMware KB 2133118 . After Snapshot consolidation task, virtual machines running on VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 3 hosts will crash. These are the type of errors… Continue reading