lenzker – vLenzker

Better together: #vSphere 7 and #NSX-T 3.0 OR We are slowly getting friends ;)

20. April 202020. April 2020lenzker

Let me start with a quote I wrote down 5 years ago (wow did time pass by).

IMO this quote is still correct (maybe I should have used network & security skills) and really changed the quality of services I can deliver within the IT field. My NSX journey startet at this time with homelabbing and learning NSX-v from the one and only fellow comdivision partner & friend Matthias Eisner.

NSX-v; NSX-T; NSX Datacenter; NSX Cloud; NSX Advanced Load Balancer; NSX Intelligence.

Woa woa woa ….. that’s a lot of NSX…. Remember; NSX is not a single product. NSX is a suite of network & security products fullfilling VMware’s dream: Deliver every network & security service in software.

NSX-v (or NSX for vSphere) has been the software defined networking solution for vSphere evolved from the product vCloud Networking & Security. We were able to to create software-defined VXLAN networks or software defined network services with edge services gateway in a simple manor & create microsegmentation around vSphere based virtual machines.

It was good but it was a product around vSphere and not a real network product (which made it easier for me to get started with it).

Better together: #vSphere 7 and #Horizon 7.12 with #Nvidia vGPUs in high end #vdi environments

17. April 202017. April 2020lenzker

Current situations accelerate the demand for virtual desktops and a proper virtual desktop infrastructure. I am working for years in the field of the software-defined datacenter and virtual desktops delivered via VMware Horizon. While standard office virtual desktops have become something like a commodity, the usage of hardware graphics accelerated workload and high-end demand is still kind of ‘newer’ and not as mature as the non-gpu workload.

I am involved in a large scale product that creates a virtual desktop landscape for engineers doing a lot computer aided engineering (CAE). This is a very interesting environment that comes with a lot of difficult user requirements and how it can be solved.

3D Acceleration required during normal “working” operations when modelling / analyzing components. (NVIDA vGPU for the win)
Huge amount of local persistent storage to cache models loaded/checked out from a network location. (vSAN is everywhere in the cluster, included in Horizon Advanced & brutal fast if you do it right).
High throughput between the virtual desktops and the network location (The big benefit of a VDI setup).
Secure access from everywhere & sharing of the session (Another big benefit of VDI).
Windows & Linux Desktops must be supported (Horizon can do that)
Huge amount of memory per virtual desktop since sometimes models can have 100/200GB of size and needs to resist in the memory of the virtual machine. (vSphere scales indefinelty [almost :P]).
Most engineers will require a dedicated linux desktop where he can individually use modules/kernels/packages based on his needs (an IT managements nightmare). (dedicated user assignment with persistent VDIs).
Different working behaviours (more than 500 different user-interaction scenarios) that cannot easily be matched to a single use-case.
Store certain states of the virtual desktop. Loading / pre-processing might take 1-XX hours and needs to be repeated several times (VM snapshots with memory ftw).
Certain Desktops should be shared among team-members (working in parallel or sequential).
…..

#VMware‘s Center of Advanced Learning (#VMwareCAL): We did it … and it was quite an interesting ride

25. October 201925. October 2019lenzker

Almost two weeks are over and I am back at the SFO airport. I have written about my expectation of VMware’s center of advanced learning and it is about time to wrap things up.

First of all. Congratulations to Yves Sandfort & Jens Hennig and therefore the whole comdivision for being involved in multiple post-cal awards e.g. as a top-scorer on the class besides Mr. triple VCDX Safouh Kharrat & Rachit Srivastava more about that later).

Besides that Yves’ team an our team were awarded with the best final presentation based on a case study and a customer C-level sales pitch simulation.

#VMware‘s Center of Advanced Learning (#VMwareCAL): What is it good for …. and my personal expectations

14. October 201914. October 2019lenzker

A dream comes true. Since I started specializing on VMware products I always wanted to visit its Headquarters in Palo Alto. I have driven through Palo Alto multiple times during personal trips over the last year. Silicon Valley, Stanford, so much great myths surround my head when I think about this place.

And here I am: I am currently traveling to Palo Alto to visit the VMware campus for two weeks. Being part of comdivision, a German VMware Partner holding all 5 master services competencies, Yves Sandfort, Jens Henning and myself were given the chance to attend a special training at The VMware headquarter.

Center of Advanced Learning

VCAP-NV Deployment Exam Preparation: Tips and Tricks

30. May 201930. May 2019lenzker

During VMware Empower 2019 in Lissabon my colleague Jens Henning and myself had the honor to do two breakout sessions about the VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Network Virtualization (VCAP-NV) exam.

In this session we covered tips and tricks for the deploy exam. This short post should summarize the content for all those people who weren‘t able to attend. The following information are totally suitable for the VCAP-Deploy exam in all kind of VMware‘s tracks:

Datacenter Virtualization
Network Virtualization
Desktop- and Mobility
Cloud Management & Automation

Lenzker’s Why VMworld 2019 ? 10 Reasons Why You Should Go

27. May 201927. May 2019lenzker

It’s this time of the year again where a lot of us need to decide. Shall I go to this year’s VMworld? From time to time discussions come up with statements like:

“(#VMworld) is not the same any more…..When I was young, real knowledge and content was presented… . I was at #VMworld in the old days before it was cool….Virtualization is legacy, Azure and AWS is the only thing that counts”

Who am I to contradict those statements (even though they are wrong :P). I will try to give you my opinion why #VMworld is still the tech-conference highlight of the year.

If it’s your first time visiting VMware’s event I am going to create a second article called ‘let’s visit #VMworld’ about some personal tips and tricks how to get the maximum out of this years #VMworld

#vRealize Operations and #PowerCLI: better together OR distributed switch health check alert. How to easily identify a wrong configured physical network

17. May 201917. May 2019lenzker

During this week I worked a lot with vRealize Operations (vRops). vRops is a great tool when we need to get easy and quick insight into our environment, especially when the environment is a little bit larger. This post should highlight why the eco system (products and community) around VMware is so great and helps us to chose the right tool for the right purpose.

At a customer’s environment we gathered the following vRops alerts

“The MTU on the Distributed Switch is not allowed by one or more VLANs on the host’

“One or more VLANs are unsupported by the physical switch”