Recently I revamped my lab storage with the addition of a HP Microserver Gen8 and a dual-port Emulex OCe10102 10GbE card. After some initial struggles with Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3, I decided to go back to FreeNAS 9.3. Continue reading
VMware
VCAP5-DCD… failed
Last Saturday I sat the VMware VCAP5 Datacenter Design exam.
And failed.
Whilst it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience, I feel it’s important to document it all the same. Continue reading
Configuring DTC access between vRealize Automation IaaS and Microsoft SQL Server
Recently I had an issue with vRealize Automation communicating with my SQL Server. Unfortunately, the IaaS database plays a fundamental part in any vRA installation, so any problem with it will severely limit your deployment. Continue reading
Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – another stoppage in play
If you have been following my series on vRealize Automation then you will have noticed I have not posted anything recently.
The installation has experienced a number of issues, the most recent being that I upgraded to version 6.2.3 and it appears to have caused an issue. Continue reading
Editing vRealize Automation appliance PostgreSQL database by hand
About a month ago I accidentally deleted a SQL database as part of a migration to a new failover cluster. The database in question was the IaaS database used by my vRealize Automation installation, and no backup was available. Mistakes like that in a lab happen from time to time and are okay, as long as you can be the one to fix them. Continue reading
Fixing Emulex 10GbE on ESXi 5.5
Last year at VMworld in San Francisco I bought two Emulex OCe10102 10GbE cards for my home lab, and used two Dell/Force10 cables to connect them together. One card went into my Dell PowerEdge T710, and one in my HP Microserver Gen7. Continue reading
Create a Microsoft SQL 2014 Failover Cluster on Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Core
When it first came out last year, I installed Microsoft SQL 2014 and configured an Availability Group to host my vCenter database (despite it not being supported).
Unfortunately it has never worked perfectly, and today I decided it was time to do the job right. I still need high availability for my SQL Server, and Microsoft Clustering Services would be ideal. Continue reading
Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – Part 11: Configure endpoint & fabric/business groups
In part 10 we configured the vRealize Automation default tenant for our lab. We decided against using multiple tenants as the lab is only hosting one organization, and business groups utilizing it will be defined using other means.
In this part, we configure the blueprints which will make up our service catalog. Continue reading
Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – temporary stoppage in play
If you have been following my series on vRealize Automation then you will have noticed I have not posted anything in the last week.
This is due to an error I’ve encountered whilst trying to add a licence for the IaaS components. Once I have resolved this (or pulled out all my hair and called VMware!) I will continue on with the series.
Thanks for checking back.
Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – Part 10: Configure tenants
In part 9 we installed and configured the IaaS platform for our lab.
In this part we discuss tenants. We configure the default tenant, and explain why you might need more than one. Continue reading
virtualhobbit 