New VMware NSX Licensing Scheme is released

Hi all,

VMware just announced the new NSX Licensing scheme so please read the FAQ here which has all the preliminary information without even getting panicked and also get in touch with your sales person (assigned to your account) which will give you the better idea.

So by looking at this the most suitable one for any small to mid size organization is the "Advanced" version which has mostly all the bells and whistles except the multi site and Cross VC functionalities.

Its a simple math when making the decisions on what the organization wants. If its ready to spend money to connect their geographically dispersed locations then Enterprise edition is the only choice.

To promote open stack the standard Edition is having the support for it. Home Lab people might have to go for the Standard Edition depending on the price of it as I'm sure it wont be affordable to choose the Advanced or Enterprise version.

IPSEC and SSL VPN  are part of Enterprise which is rising a question on just using L2VPN when normal organization have staff people who are connecting remotely using their MAC/WIN/*NIX machines. So even for that feature they need to go for Enterprise version. Hoping that this should be part of Advanced and NOT Enterprise but lets see what the future might hold.

All the remote features are part of Enterprise which is nice as if you don't need it you don't buy them.

There is no indication on pricing done as the pointer was set to contact the Sales person but even a hint should be fine on the pricing model or even if one has to use just one feature from other edition then what is the cost involved in that (rather than switching from one edition to another completely).

Home Lab people will surely need most of the features to test and try out various scenarios but not sure what will happen in that area unless the person is a vExpert, then its a different story.

This granular model looks adaptive but the pricing model will tell us more on how people feel about it. I just heard that it will be based on 1K per socket but I would not go with it unless it come from a valid source or from VMware itself. So hoping something should be publicly available which will give an idea to the large audience.

Share and care !

Thanks for your time.

Performance History Issue in vCenter 5.1

Recently I was reading an internal posting and also found out through my colleague Josh Gray @jasper9, on Twitter that in vCenter 5.1 the Performance History is not retaining any information beyond 30 days. (which is only a month worth of data).

Now such performance data is crucial for getting the analysis done for so many things.

At present the issue is being investigated by VMware.

The issue is discussed here in KB 2042164.

@duncanyb has posted a blog here.


The alternate solution is put forward my @vcdxnz001 on this post here about using vCOPS Foundation.

Apart from it if you have a monthly backup of vCenter VM (complete VMDK) or the VC Database (either SQL or Oracle) then have the backup verified again and if possible make another copy of them. (individual monthly backup copies). So if you need for last one years performance history then you need 12 monthly back up copies of the vCenter Database. Depending on the requirements you can go and use the back up for any performance history retained in the database. Mainly if there is a new install of vCenter Server 5.1 then this should be for few months only as vSphere 5.1 released in October 2012.  It does affect to both instances of fresh install of vCenter Server and an upgrade of vCenter Server from an older versions to 5.1.

I suggest to use the option of "Subscribe to Document" on the KB page to get notification when the fix is released.

Sharing is caring. RT the Tweet if you can.

VCAP5-DCD - Hot Target - Objective - 1.3

Objective 1.3 – Determine Risks, Constraints, and Assumptions

Knowledge

·         Identify appropriate best practices related to a proposed design.                      

* Associate a role to the information that needs to be collected.

·         Differentiate between the general concepts of a risk, a requirement, a constraint, and an assumption.

Skills and Abilities

·         Given a business ask or request, determine whether it is a risk, a requirement, a constraint, or an assumption.

·         Given an organization, evaluate and respond to common inherent risks, constraints, and/or assumptions.

Tools

·         Developing Your Virtualization Strategy and Deployment Plan

Scope – Identify the project scope in detail

·         Properly identifying the scope prevents unintended project expansion.

·         Example: The virtualization project includes only the London datacenter’s test and development servers. At this time, it does not include any production servers or remote offices.

Goals – Identify and list the overall project goals that the organization wants to achieve

·          The project goals should be derived from the business goals of the organization.

·          Each project goal should be specific, measurable, and actionable.

·          Example: The organization wants to achieve a 25 percent reduction in operational costs by the end of the year

Requirements – Identify and list the key business and technical requirements that must be achieved in the project

• Example: The organization must comply with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulations.

• Example: The underlying infrastructure for any service defined as strategic must support a minimum of four 9s of uptime (99.99 percent).

Assumptions – Identify and list the design assumptions

• Assumptions are design components that are assumed to be valid without proof.

• Example: The datacenter uses shared (core) networking hardware across production and nonproduction infrastructures.

• Example: The organization has sufficient network bandwidth between sites to facilitate replication.

• Example: Security policies dictate server hardware separation between DMZ servers and internal servers.

Constraints – Identify and list the design constraints

• Constraints limit the design choices.

• Example: Due to a preexisting vendor relationship, host hardware has already been selected. The hardware is …

A constraint could be a business process, a business policy, or a technical limitation. Clearly list the constraints so that they can be reviewed for accuracy and

referred to during the design project.

If a particularly goal, requirement, or constraint cannot be met or creates a risk, discuss the issue with the key stakeholders and SMEs. Discuss it as early as possible in the design project so that the best possible compromise can be reached early in the design process.

Discussing issues and risks early in the design project also reduces the number of surprises in the end design. Surprises in the end design increase the risk of not reaching an agreement to move forward with implementation.

Risks – Identify any risks that might prevent achieving the project goals

• Example: The organization's main datacenter contains only a single core router, which is a single point of failure.

• Example: The lack of executive sponsorship places at risk the goal of virtualizing 75 percent of the datacenter by the end of 2010

The conceptual design focuses on achieving the organization’s business goals and requirements.

• Determine the entities that are affected by the project:

- Lines of business, users, applications, processes, management methods, physical machines, and so on

• Determine how the goals, requirements, and constraints map to each entity.

• Design the infrastructure that will be necessary to achieve each entity’s goals and requirements, while staying within the constraints.

- For example, where will you need availability, scalability, performance, security, manageability, and so on, while staying within cost and other constraints?

Document the conceptual design with diagrams, tables, and text.

Gathering information about your organization’s situation is part of the design methodology presented in this course. Choosing, and then interviewing, key technical personnel and project stakeholders to determine your organization’s situation is just as important as gathering workloadsizing information. The organization’s situation will affect your design.

Use interviews early in the design process to uncover things that affect the end design, such as project goals, budget constraints, hardware policy choices, and department boundaries. Sometimes, organizational boundaries and politics affect the achievable consolidation ratio. Key stakeholder and SME interviews help to uncover this information.

For example, one organization’s primary goal might be to reduce its datacenter footprint and the associated costs, while another organization’s goal might be to virtualize to meet the business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) initiatives of its business.

The first organization might be seeking to achieve 10:1, 20:1, or higher consolidation ratios. The second organization, on the other hand, might be entirely satisfied with a 5:1 consolidation ratio, so long as the virtual infrastructure meets its disaster recovery requirements.

Organizational and political factors often affect the design, yet they are not strictly technical. Sometimes, resistance to virtualization exists due to the preconceptions and fears of decision makers. A feeling of control often accompanies owning physical hardware. The loss of physical hardware might result in a sense of loss of control. Decision makers might also have concerns about performance issues as well as concerns about the return on investment and total cost of ownership associated with virtualization. Resolving the doubts and fears of the decision makers is necessary to move quickly through the design process.

VCAP Study - Merged PDF Files

I have started preparing for the VCAP again and mainly I was using the online documentation for reference for the available blueprints.

For more details on both certifications, visit here.

I have tried reading the PDF files on my home PC, laptop and tablets (Touchpad and Playbook) using Octopus (BETA) and as a backup Dropbox. The only challenge I had was to look for the correct PDF files for certain subject/feature/configuration. It requires to open multiple PDF file/s one at a time and then do the search for the word/s.

One of my colleagues has given me a hint about merging the PDF files in to one. So I went ahead and merged almost all the PDF files which are necessary to study for VCAP certifications.

I have included the screenshot below for all the files I have merged in to one main PDF file which you can keep at the central location for easy access and to read while you are traveling, waiting or actually reading at midnight after the family falls asleep :-)

To merge the PDF files I have used the site http://foxyutils.com/mergepdf/.

This site lets you make one PDF file of 32 MB at the max. The one I have created is of 21.1 MB approx. with 2576 pages in total.

This is a good way to have all the information at one central location and just have to skim through whenever I need something to refer. This is just me but people can still have them separate and refer.

Hope you will find the same as useful as me. For now the file can be downloaded from here.

If you have any other suggestion then you can leave the feedback and I will try to work on that.

Good Luck with your study for the VCAPs ;-)

My Linkedin Groups for Certifications

I have created few groups on Linkedin for all the VMware lovers which is focused on certifications such as VCP, VCAPx-DCD, VCPx-DT, vCloud and VCAPx-DT (coming soon)

Here are the links so please feel free to join and discuss.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/VCAPDCD-vSphere-41-50-3672027?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/VCAPDT-VMware-View-46-50-3799029?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr


http://www.linkedin.com/groups/vCloud-15-vSphere-5-VCP-3999514?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/VCPDT-VMware-View-45-46-3799006?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

You can also follow me on Linkedin and Twitter @mandivs

Thanks for your time.

Why my versions are not matching? eg. ESX/VC/VMware Tools

Lot of people are curious about the versions numbers they see on ESX/ESXi/vCenter/Virtual Center server, VMware Tools etc. etc.

Have a look at the following article

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1014508

This article has all the information about the version matrix


Additional Information section has 3 more links

• Determining detailed build number information for VMware ESX 4.0.x hosts (1012514)
   
• Determining detailed build number information for VMware ESX 3.0.x and 3.5.x hosts (1001179)
  
• Determining VMware Software Version and Build Number (392)

Try matching all the build numbers in your environment and verify if you are not missing any critical and Important Patches.

As always leave the Feedback !!