Previously I deployed a KMS solution within my VMware Home Lab. Everything was working great until I accidentally powered off my entire Home Lab. When I did this several of my VMs were locked, even though I had powered everything back up, and my KMS was up and running. This proved to be a very good learning experience since I was able to learn a lot during my resolution of the issue.
Continue reading “vSphere/vSAN Encryption: Virtual Machine Locked Alarm”
In this blog post, I will show how easy it is to upgrade a PowerProtect Virtual Instance running within VMware. If you have ever administered Avamar before, you know just how painful it can be to upgrade.
In a previous blog post, I stated how to deploy DellEMC PowerProtect. However, once PowerProtect is deployed you must add a workload in order to start protecting data. In this blog post, I will show you the steps required in order to protect VM workloads within VMware.
Continue reading “How to: Protecting Workloads with PowerProtect”
PowerProtect is a Software defined data management software from DellEMC. It comes in two different variants, a hardware appliance with storage and a Virtual edition. The Virtual Edition must be pointed to a Data Domain. This software has been written from the ground up, and mainly competes against Rubrik and Cohesity. PowerProtect uses protection policies to protect assets. This software has been written from the ground up, and appears to have address a lot of the shortcomings that newer backup vendors poke DellEMC for. Personally (my open unofficial opinion), I believe this solution will eventually replace traditional Avamar/Data Domain/IDPA.
Previously, I wrote a blog post on how to configure vSAN/vSphere encryption. This was just the first step of a two step process. The first step, as previously stated, was how to deploy and configure the KMS Keystore. Without the KMS Keystore, encryption can’t occur. However once that is deployed, enabling vSphere/vSAN encryption is as simple as toggling a switch! Check out this post before proceeding.
Well the day is finally here, the day that I can share that I’ve successfully purchased my very own HomeLab! This has been a source of struggle for me, since I’ve always wanted a HomeLab. I entertained and researched various setups, including the Intel NUC. During my search I came across the SuperMicro E300-8D, which supports up to 128GB of RAM. For more information on the E300-8D, check out SuperMicro’s Website. It was the perfect price point and it allowed me to get the most out of my investment. It fit what I was looking for, which was a small footprint server that didn’t require much power. Additionally I wanted something quiet. While some have complained about the noise, I don’t believe it’s an issue with the stock fans, so long that it isn’t located within a sleeping area. The Server is setup in my Home Office. I also wanted to ensure I had plenty of memory so that I wouldn’t have any issues when provisioning a nested ESXi vSAN Lab.
In my opinion, one of the best features within the 6.5 vCenter Server Appliance is the ability to perform backups from the appliance itself (natively). No agents, snapshots or scripts required. It really is quite simple, and I’m glad VMware added this additional feature. How many times have you heard someone explain the importance of backups?
Continue reading “How to: Back up your vCenter Server Appliance”
Today’s blog post is all about vSAN. vSAN, according to VMware, is VMware’s hyper-converged software solution. In order to understand the differences between hyper-converged and software defined, let’s look at the definition for each. With all of the cool/hip buzz words, there is a lot of misunderstandings, and often times these words are interchangeably used without understanding the terminology correctly.
Finalizing this month’s series on data protection, I wanted to follow up last week’s blog post on installing Avamar Virtual Edition with this one, which is installing Data Domain Virtual Edition. The two are often married together in Data Protection deployments. Simply put, Avamar is the front end backup engine that has all of backup software, and DataDomain is the landing spot for the backup data. DataDomain is Dell EMC’s appliance based deduplication device. It is the market leader in purpose-built backup appliances. Various workloads can be ingested, including data from Avamar, VEEAM, Networker, etc. Like the Avamar VE, DataDomain VE allows you fully take advantage of virtualization in one easy to manage package. The virtual edition is geared towards small-to-medium size environments and/or EDGE locations (ROBO). With that said, let’s get started!
Be sure to check out the system requirements before you proceed.
Dell EMC easily allows anyone to give DataDomain VE a try. To get started, first download the trial copy by heading over to Dell EMC’s website.
In the upper right hand corner, select download for the VMware 0.5TB Try and Buy.
Select download
The download file should start downloading
Continue reading “How to: Dell EMC Data Domain Virtual Edition Install on ESXi”
TheVirtualBoi 