What’s New in PHD Virtual Backup 5.3

November 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I’ve just been catching up on some blog feeds and emails that I haven’t had a chance to read in recent weeks. Apparently PHD Virtual dropped version 5.3 of their backup and replication product on the world.

It’s now more efficient and each Virtual Backup Appliance (VBA) can handle 8 concurrent backup / restore operations.

The replication features of the product look handy too with the ability to use a portable drive to “seed” replicated servers thus minimising the amount of WAN traffic transmitted.

There’s a “What’s New” 7 minute video on YouTube that explains all of these bits that I just watched. Now I just need to find some time to run it up in the lab!

Filed Under: Reviews, Software Tagged With: ,

Changing Cisco UCS Platform Emulator 2.0 Hardware Inventory

November 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment

After installing and configuring the Cisco UCS Platform Emulator, the default inventory for the emulator may not be sufficient for most. So, update it! Here’s how….

The appliance UCS Manager will load the configuration stored in the ‘Start-up Inventory’. On deployment and with no changes, this only contains 2 x Fabrix Interconnects, 1 x Chassis and 8 x Server. That configuration can be added to or modified by a drag-and-drop interface in the Hardware Inventory. To access this, select the ‘Hardware Inventory’ option on the appliance control panel inside the web interface.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Hardware, Howto, Lab, Virtualization Tagged With: , , ,

Configuring Cisco UCS Platform Emulator v2.0 on vSphere

November 29, 2011 by 2 Comments

In a previous post, I discussed the process for migrating and installing the UCS-PE v2.0 into a vSphere environment. In this post, we will look at configuring and initial usage of the environment.

Following deployment, the VM may or may not have booted with a DHCP IP address. We’ll take up the story there:

Configuring UCSPE v2.0:

1. Launch vClient and open the console to the UCSPE virtual machine.

2. The initial username and password for the appliance are: u: config, p: config. Login to the appliance using these credentials. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Howto, Lab, Virtualization Tagged With: , , ,

vSpecialist Labs: Roadmap

November 29, 2011 by 2 Comments

Part Two – Roadmap

In the hardware post for the vSpecialist Labs, we listed the hardware we have to play with to construct the Lab. Now is the challenge of what to do with it. Here is a scratch list of the projects we will be running in the Labs over the coming months.

Status: Testing (T), Research (R), Proof-of-Concept (POC), Evaluation (E).

Infrastructure / vSphere:

- ghettoVCB VM backups (T)

- ESXi Hardening using host profiles (T)

- Cisco UCS Platform Emulator v2.0 deployment and configuration (T) (E)

- vCenter Orchestrator appliance (T)

- Integrating vCenter Orchestrator appliance with Cisco UCS platform emulator (T) (E)

- vCenter Operations (E)

vCloud Director:

- Multi-site vCloud Director configuration with v1.5 (R) (POC)

- vCloud Director appliance (T)

- Multi-site PvDCs per Organisation (R)

- vCloud Connector 1.5 within an Organisation as an endpoint (T)

Site Recovery Manager 5

- SRM within a vCD Organisation as an endpoint (T)

- vSphere Replication (T)

VMware View 5

- View deployment with Cisco UCS (T) (POC)

Over time, we will link to these roadmap items with posts and more information. Please also see the vSpecialist Labs Overview page for lab configuration information.

Filed Under: Lab, vSpecialistLabs Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

vSpecialist Labs: Hardware

November 29, 2011 by 3 Comments

Part One – Hardware

I’ve been fortunate to get my hands on some pretty decent hardware (for a ‘home’ lab setup anyway) to build this lab. The servers are as follows:

Servers:

- 2 Servers @ 2 x Quad Xeon 2.0GHz / 16GB RAM

- 2 Servers @ 2 x Dual Xeon 2.66GHz / 16GB RAM

- 1 Server @ 2 x Quad Xeon 2.0GHz / 8GB RAM

- 1 Server @ 2 x Dual Xeon 2.6GHz / 8GB RAM

- 1 Server @ 2 x Dual Xeon 3.0GHz / 4GB RAM

Storage:

- 1 x HP MSA1000 (14 x Ultra320 SCSI 15k)

- 2 x HP / Brocade Switches (7 ports per switch

- 1 x MSA60 (14 x Ultra320 SCSI 15k)

Network:

- 4 x 1GB NICs per ESXi host

- 2 x 4GB HBA per ESXi host

- 1 x 48-port Cisco access switch

All the kit is now installed into the racks and available via remote control. Fortunately, this isn’t a true home build in the definitive sense, as the kit is being hosted in a Tier 3 datacenter in the South West – something that will make my wife happy (show me a long suffering vAdmin significant other who loves servers in the spare room), and also keep the power bills to something near normal levels.

Back to vSpecialist Labs: Overview, next page vSpecialist Labs: Roadmap.

Filed Under: Hardware, Howto, Lab, vSpecialistLabs Tagged With: ,
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