VxRAIL

VVD on VxRail – Shared Edge & Compute Domain (External vCenter Installation)

David Ring VMware, VxRAIL , , , , ,

Note: this is an example for reference only please use the VxRail ‘External vCenter’ installation procedures provided by Dell EMC.

The following will require an understanding of the VVD on VxRAIL design for which all associated documentation can be found here:

VMware Validated Design 4.2 on VxRail Deployment Guides

This post details how to install a VxRail appliance leveraging an external vCenter server, for example this is the case when you wish to deploy a VVD on VxRail solution where the second VxRail instance used for the Shared Edge and Compute Domain (Workload Domain) requires the use of an external vCenter (vCenter is deployed on the Management Domain VxRail Appliance). This process is strictly for the workload domain  and differs from the procedure used to deploy the first Management Domain VxRail Appliance. For more information on the architecture of VVD on VxRail please check out this cool lightboard video from Jason:

VVD for SDDC on VxRail Lightboard Overview

To begin you will need to have the Shared Edge and Compute Domain (Workload Domain) vCenter deployed on the management VxRAIL Appliance. Continue reading →

VMware vSAN – Enable Provision of VM SWAP Files as Thin

David Ring VMware, VxRAIL , , ,

The following steps detail how to enable vSAN to provision the Virtual Machine Swap files as thin. vSAN Sparse Swap Files allow you to conserve space in the vSAN datastore by only consuming vSAN storage as the swap gets used i.e instead of leaving as default thick swap files which means for example when you create a VM with 32GB of memory this results in the creation of a 32GB virtual swap file (.vswp) unless of course you have configured reservations. You can see how quickly your vSAN datastore could fill if there are many hundreds of VM’s created in this default manner.

Steps to to enable provisioning of virtual machine swap files on vSAN as thin:

From the vSphere Client

1. In the Navigator, click Hosts and Clusters and expand the entire cluster tree.
2. Select the first host in the clsuter.
3. Click the Configure tab->System->Advanced System Settings.
4. Click the Edit button.vsanvswpthin0 Continue reading →

vCenter VCSA 6.5 – Repoint to New PSC

David Ring VMware, VxRAIL , , , , ,

Please also see related post:

VCSA 6.0U2 Lookup SSO Domain Name & Site Name

The following details how to repoint a vCenter VCSA using an external PSC within the same site to a different PSC FQDN. One reason for completing such a task is in the event of your active PSC failing you can simply repoint VC to a second PSC in the same site. The reason I completed such a task was part of a VxRAIL VVD deployment leveraging a load balanced PSC config which required to repoint the VxRAIL management VC to the LB FQDN.

If you wish to confirm the current configuration status of PSC & VC simply navigate via the Web Client:

Home->Admin->System Config->Nodes->Objects

vcsarepoint0 Continue reading →

Dell EMC – Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (EHC) 4.1.2

David Ring FEHC , , , , , , ,

EHC LOGO

EHC (Enterprise Hybrid Cloud) which is the DellEMC turnkey VMware (vRealize Suite) based cloud offering has made great strides in recent releases transforming the cloud strategy for CPSD CI/HCI, namely EHC on VxBlock/VxRack Flex/VxRail (Engineered, manufactured, managed, supported and sustained as one product) and this release is no different with massive improvements around automation especially in relation to both the Install and Upgrade process associated with the EHC platform on VxRail leading to far quicker and more seamless deployments of the EHC stack. Enhanced multi-site capabilities, DRaaS offering on VxRail and factory delivered EHC on VxRack Flex w/NSX are some of the biggest milestones with this release. Continue reading →

VxRail – Welcome Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (EHC)

David Ring FEHC, VxRAIL , ,

Introducing ‘EHC on VxRail’!

VxRAILEHC

Introduced as part of the EHC 4.1.1 release (Code named “Challenger”) – GA March ’17

Simple, Easy, Start Small, Scalable!

VxRAIL HCI Appliance now has the option of including the ‘Enterprise Hybrid Cloud 4.1.1’ platform as part of an automated greenfield installation. Thousands of hours of engineering, designing, testing and validation has gone into this release with a laser focus on delivering an automated ‘EHC on VxRail’ onsite installation. Engineered on the VxRail P470(F) Appliances, ‘EHC on VxRail’ offers a lighter weight and smaller footprint hybrid cloud solution from where you can start small and scale exponentially. Continue reading →

Introducing VCE VxRAIL

David Ring VCE, VxRAIL , , , ,

A Quantum Leap in Hyper-Converged Appliances

EMC|VCE and VMware have added a Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Appliance (HCIA) offering named VxRail to the existing CI portfolio of Vblocks, VxBlocks, VxRacks  (Blocks,Racks,Appliances).  

 

Vxrail1VxRail is built on a modular scale out clustering architecture that comprises of appliances (Base building block) where each appliance can house up to 4x industry standard x86 hardware compute nodes (four independent ESXi hosts) inclusive of storage. The appliance has a small footprint which is consuming only two rack units ‘2U’ in height, thus we will use the term ‘2U4N’ as abbreviation for the rack space and compute node count within the appliance. With the initial launch (Q1 2016) VxRail will have the ability to scale up to 8x appliances allowing for a total of 32x compute nodes (the Q2 VxRail release will allow for twice these scaling counts allowing for up to 16x Appliances resulting in a max total of 64 nodes in a VxRail cluster).

Continue reading →