• Upgrading NSX-T 2.5 to NSX-T 3.0

    May 9, 2020 by: Sean Whitney in: NSX-T No Comment

      NSX-T 3.0 was a monumental release for VMware providing a ton of wealth of new features in the platform. Although I won’t list all of the new features, the main highlights from the release, which I will cover in more details in separate posts, are:   NSX Federation – Simplified networking and security across multiple sites Distributed IDS – Fully distributed IDS without having to architect your environment Support for VDS 7.0 – Ability to run on a vSphere VDS instead of the N-VDS Support for bare metal Windows 2016 servers URL Analysis – Classification and reputation scores L3 […]

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  • Upgrading NSX to 6.4 using the new Upgrade Coordinator

    March 23, 2018 by: Sean Whitney in: NSX No Comment

      As of NSX 6.4 we added a new feature called the Upgrade Coordinator. It allows you to upgrade your entire NSX platform via one click, or you can plan out your upgrade accordingly. Before you get started, make sure to read the Upgrade Coordinator Guide to ensure that all bases are covered. For example, Upgrade Coordinator doesn’t support some services like partner security virtual appliances.   Some important prerequisites that I wanted to highlight before starting. Make sure to back up your current configuration Uninstall Data Security before upgrading NSX Manager if you are using this service Make sure […]

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  • vSphere Integrated Containers Part 5 – Installing and Using VMware Admiral

    April 5, 2017 by: Sean Whitney in: vSphere Integrated Containers No Comment

      VMware Admiral is a container management platform with a GUI to help deploy and manage containers and provide life-cycle management. Admiral is highly scalable and has a small footprint. Some of the key features of Admiral are listed below. Note: Admiral is currently in beta so it’s not officially supported. Use at your own risk until we release a fully supported version. Rule-based resource Management – container placement Live Status Updates Template Management Deploying Admiral   To deploy admiral, you can simply run the following command from a Photon OS VM. Admiral will run as a container pulled from […]

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  • Creating a PhotonOS VM and enabling remote docker API

    April 4, 2017 by: Sean Whitney in: Photon No Comment

      I wanted to write a quick post on creating a PhotonOS VM with the Docker remote API Enabled. I ran into an issue where I couldn’t add my PhotonOS docker host to Admiral since the API was not enabled and I found the follow post from Ryan Kelly on how to enable the remote API. I figured while I was writing this post, I would also run through the steps of deploying a new PhotonOS and configuring a static IP address.   First, Deploy the PhotonOS OVA. You can download the file from here.   Open the console and […]

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  • vSphere Integrated Containers Part 4 – Installing vSphere Web Client Plugin for VIC

    April 3, 2017 by: Sean Whitney in: vSphere Integrated Containers No Comment

    I found some documentation on vmware.github surrounding a VIC plugin for the vSphere Web Client. I decided to test it out to see if it would be useful, and document the steps. At the end of the day, I think it needs a lot of work, but it’s at least a starting point. There are a couple of ways to install: using a web server, and without a web server. I will be documenting the steps without a web server, but if you want documentation using a web server, click here.   Installing the vSphere Web Client VIC Engine Plugin […]

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  • vSphere Integrated Containers Part 3 – Deploy VCH with Harbor (Registry)

    April 3, 2017 by: Sean Whitney in: vSphere Integrated Containers No Comment

      In the previous post we deployed VCH without Harbor as the registry. Harbor is a enterprise-class registry container server in which you can push and pull images. Think of Harbor as a Docker distribution but with additional functionality that may be required for certain environments including:   Role Based Access Control (RBAC) AD/LDAP authentication Policy based image replication GUI, Auditing RESTful API   To learn more about these features, and Harbor in general, click here. There are a couple of ways to deploy registry, manually or via an OVA. I will be deploying via OVA. You can download Harbor […]

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  • vSphere Integrated Containers Part 2 – Prerequisites and Deployment

    March 31, 2017 by: Sean Whitney in: vSphere Integrated Containers 1 Comment

      The second part of the vSphere Integrated Containers series will be focusing on the prerequisites and the deployment. I will list the requirements for the Docker client and VCH in vSphere as well as go through the process of deploying the VCH. We will also run a couple tests at the end to make sure that VIC is working correctly. If you haven’t had a chance to go through vSphere Integrated Containers Part 1 – Getting started, I suggest taking a look to understand the components of VIC; otherwise, let’s get started!   Prerequisites   vic-machine Windows 7 or […]

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  • vSphere Integrated Containers Part 1 – Getting Started

    March 28, 2017 by: Sean Whitney in: vSphere Integrated Containers 2 Comments

      What are vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC)   vSphere Integrated Containers was announced as GA back in December of 2016. The solution provides a platform for developers to deploy containers in a vSphere Environment. On the front end, the developer teams would use their Docker client on their laptop while the vSphere Administrator would manage the underlying infrastructure through the creation of container hosts (VCH), life-cycle management as well as apply any network virtualization and security via NSX. The containers are provisioned as virtual machines, one container = one virtual machine. This allows the containers to be able to have […]

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  • vRealize Automation 7.2 Deployment Part 5 – Creating Reservations

    March 27, 2017 by: Sean Whitney in: vRealize Automation No Comment

      The final step in the deployment and setup process for vRA is to create a Reservation. A reservation allows you to allocate a set or subset of fabric group resources to a business group.   Before creating a Reservation, Network Profiles will need to be created. Navigate to Infrastructure -> Network Profiles. Click on New and select a routed, external, or nat profile. I have configured a few different networks: One VLAN backed external network, and three routed logical vxlan networks. Specify a name, DNS, the network ranges (Starting and ending IP). It’s also possible to come back to […]

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  • vRealize Automation 7.2 Deployment Part 4 – Creating Fabric Groups and Business Groups

    March 25, 2017 by: Sean Whitney in: vRealize Automation No Comment

      The next step in the vRA deployment process is to create both Fabric Groups and Business Groups. Fabric Groups are a way to group compute resources through the selections of vCenter Clusters. Business Groups are the mapping of the users to certain set of resources and services, usually this is in the form of a business unit.   Both of these steps are required in order to be able to move forward and create blueprints in vRA.   To set up a Fabric group, log into vRA with the tenant admin and navigate to Infrastructure -> Endpoints -> Fabric […]

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