The Darkest Sides of vSphere

December 26, 2019 | 276 views

In our post “The Lightest Sides of vSphere” we talked a lot about retrospection and introspection, and we asked people what they thought the best feature of vSphere was. Continuing the astronomical theme with longest days and longest nights, today we ask about the dark sides of vSphere. What is the most underrated vSphere feature, a feature you wish more people knew about? How are you backing up your vCenter Server appliance? Are you just taking a snapshot of it or backing it up as an image somehow? vSphere 6.5 introduced File-Based Backup and Restore (FBBR) as a method to protect your vSphere environment from failures. In short, it exports configuration information as a file to a remote file share or system. If you have issues you can restore a vCenter Server appliance using the installer and that file. ;

Spotlight

Positive Technologies

Positive Technologies is an independent high-growth global cybersecurity company with 700 people in ten offices on four continents. In a world increasingly run on code, vulnerable software presents a huge risk to all areas of business and critical infrastructure, a problem we believe will believe only grow in scale, complexity and seriousness. Positive Technologies analyses these vulnerabilities in one of Europe’s largest specialist laboratories, using this research to build a platform capable of automatically finding and neutralizing them prior to attack.

OTHER ARTICLES
Virtual Desktop Tools, Virtual Desktop Strategies

Virtualization can transform your company’s IT infrastructure

Article | June 8, 2023

For many companies in today’s highly competitive, rapidly digitizing world, data center transformation is not merely a one-time project – it’s a constant challenge. No corporate IT leader should be content merely to revamp their data infrastructure once, then call it a day. Instead, they should always be looking for ways to make their approach to data more dynamic and easier to scale. Ideally, they’d do so in a way that maximizes resource utilization while minimizing costs. Luckily, that’s exactly the idea behind virtualization, which involves creating a new infrastructure that’s capable of rapidly scaling and facilitating workload development. IT leaders are quickly coming to realize that with virtualization in their toolbox, they’re able to make their operations more agile than ever, and without increasing costs. This is why over 80% of enterprise server workloads today are running on virtual machines, and the market for data center virtualization is expected to reach a total value of $10 billion by 2023.

Read More
VMware, Vsphere, Hyper-V

Best Practices for vSphere 6.7 Tagging

Article | May 2, 2023

vSphere Tags were introduced in version 5.1 as a way to organize inventory objects such as VMs, Hosts, Datastores, etc., a much-needed feature for helping search for or group objects within vSphere. A Tag is basically a label that can be applied to vSphere inventory objects. When an administrator creates a tag, it is then assigned to a tag category. Categories allow the grouping of related tags. When a Category is created, you can specify associations of object types (such as; VM or Datastore) as well as whether more than one tag in a category can be applied to an object (ex; One Tag or Many Tags).

Read More
Virtual Desktop Tools, Server Hypervisors

How to automate the creation multiple routable VLANs on single L2 network using VyOS

Article | June 8, 2023

My personal homelab has a very simple network topology, everything is connected to a single flat network. This has served me well over the years, but sometimes it can prevent me from deploying more complex scenarios. Most recently while working with NSX-T and Project Pacific, I had a need for additional VLANs which my home router does not support. There are a number of software solutions that can be used including the popular pfSense, which I have used before. Over the Winter break, a colleague introduced me to VyOS, which is another popular software firewall and router solution. I had not heard of VyOS before but later realized it was derived from Vyatta, which I had heard of, but development of that solution had stopped and VyOS is now the open source version of that software. Having never played with VyoS before, I thought this might be a good learning opopournity and started to dabble with VyOS over the holiday.

Read More

Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Remote/Branch Offices & Edge Computing

Article | February 10, 2020

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is playing a significant role in building an enterprise multi-cloud environment. The benefits are well documented – you can learn more about them in a new white paper developed in collaboration with ViON, Fujitsu, and Nutanix, “Simplifying Multi-Cloud and Securing Mission Progress.” In addition to driving a cloud foundation, hyperconverged infrastructure is driving other use cases. In our first blog, we examined the impact that HCI can have in a disaster recovery solution. In this installment, we’ll discuss how HCI is changing the dynamics for remote offices and edge computing.

Read More

Spotlight

Positive Technologies

Positive Technologies is an independent high-growth global cybersecurity company with 700 people in ten offices on four continents. In a world increasingly run on code, vulnerable software presents a huge risk to all areas of business and critical infrastructure, a problem we believe will believe only grow in scale, complexity and seriousness. Positive Technologies analyses these vulnerabilities in one of Europe’s largest specialist laboratories, using this research to build a platform capable of automatically finding and neutralizing them prior to attack.

Related News

Virtual Server Infrastructure, Vsphere, Hyper-V

Innovative MSP Trusts Scale Computing to Modernize its IT Infrastructure and Boost its Bottom Line

Prnewswire | April 20, 2023

Scale Computing, the market leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions, today announced Managed Services Provider (MSP) customer success with its SC//Fleet Manager solution, the first cloud-hosted monitoring and management tool built for hyperconverged edge computing infrastructure at scale. Integrated directly into the Scale Computing Platform, SC//Fleet Manager consolidates real-time conditions for a fleet of clusters, including storage and compute resources, allowing IT leaders to quickly identify areas of concern from a single pane of glass. Cat-Tec, an MSP based in Ontario, Canada, provides enterprise-level computer network consulting to small and mid-sized businesses. Before modernizing its infrastructure with Scale Computing, Cat-Tec relied on a combination of Nutanix, VMware, and Hyper-V virtualization technologies to run its infrastructure and resell to its customers. However, they soon realized that the cost and complexity of deploying these systems were limiting their ability to scale their business and secure new customers. "While our clients all have very different operating requirements, they all have one thing in common – they want to spend less time troubleshooting their technology stack and more time focused on running their business," said Genito Isabella, co-founder and VP of Systems Integration for Cat-Tec. "Every hour that one of our IT professionals spends manually updating firmware on a server or trying to correctly diagnose a performance issue is time that could be spent on other strategic, revenue-generating projects." To overcome these challenges, Cat-Tec decided it was time to invest in a modern hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution that could help their team manage and scale their distributed infrastructure in a more efficient, cost-effective, and holistic manner. Following a rigorous vendor evaluation process, Cat-Tec selected Scale Computing due to the simplicity of its modular architecture, the ability of SC//Fleet Manager to monitor and manage multiple clusters from a single console, as well as the SC//Platform's native integration with leading third-party backup systems which ensures resilience in the event of a system-wide disruption. "We estimate that the ability to pre-stage hardware has saved us an average of four hours per deployment per client implementation. Meanwhile, using SC//Fleet Manager to proactively troubleshoot issues remotely has dramatically improved our ability to meet our SLAs," continued Isabella. "This means we can now devote more time helping customers solve real problems rather than just constantly having to put out fires. It's not an exaggeration to say that Scale Computing has completely transformed our business." About Scale Computing Scale Computing is a leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions. Using patented HyperCore™ technology, Scale Computing Platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and corrects infrastructure problems in real-time, enabling applications to achieve maximum uptime, even when local IT resources and staff are scarce. Edge Computing is the fastest-growing area of IT infrastructure, and industry analysts have named Scale Computing an outperformer and leader in the space, including being named the #1 edge computing vendor by CRN. Scale Computing's products are sold by thousands of value-added resellers, integrators, and service providers worldwide. When ease of use, high availability, and TCO matter, Scale Computing Platform is the ideal infrastructure platform. Read what our customers have to say on Gartner Peer Insights, Spiceworks, TechValidate, G2, and Trust Radius.

Read More

Vsphere

Tintri Continues Exponential Growth with 2H 2021 Earnings

Tintri | February 21, 2022

Tintri, a DDN subsidiary and the leading provider of auto adaptive, workload intelligent platforms, announced 42% global revenue growth from 1H2021 to 2H2021, including a double-digit revenue increase from net new logos. This expansion is fuelled by Tintri's enhanced global executive sales team and continued VMstore innovation, driving the company's mission to deliver hands-off, cutting-edge and highly adaptive technology to help enterprises manage complex infrastructures. Tintri has had exponential growth in the second half of 2021, driven by the upswell in demand from our customers due to the popularity of containerized applications in virtualized environments. The containerization movement is making serious headway into enterprise data processes and platforms, and Tintri is perfectly positioned to service these emerging markets. We've put together an outstanding global sales team to ensure that customers know our technology was architected for these types of workloads from day one." Phil Trickovic, senior vice president of Revenue, Tintri Enhanced Global Executive Sales Team Following the appointment of a new executive team in Q4 2021, Tintri's latest investment to operate under strong management comes with the newly structured global executive sales team. Comprised of Tintri veterans with invaluable experience, this team best understands the unique challenges of data-centric enterprise customers and the ways in which Tintri's technology can help overcome specialized pain points and evolve to continue to meet enterprise's changing needs. The new global executive sales team is comprised of: Zachary Bertamini, vice president of Sales, Americas, whose strategic vision has been a catalyst to fuel Tintri's growth in the Americas over the past year. Josh Marlar, vice president of Global Business Development, who is responsible for building a multimillion-dollar net new pipeline quarter over quarter and brings over a decade of experience in IT business developments. Mark Walsh, vice president of Sales, EMEA, who brings over 30 years of experience in the IT storage sector and re-joins Tintri from IBM. Norimasa Ono, general manager of Sales, Japan, who led start up efforts in the Japanese market and brings strong relationships with local resellers and enterprise customers, as well as the ability to open new markets for Tintri. Continued VMstore Innovation Tintri continues to innovate, constantly enhancing, updating and advancing capabilities for its customers. This dedication is underscored by VMstore's double-digit revenue growth YoY. The latest releases to VMstore, the world's most intelligent virtual data management system, include: vSphere Tag Support – VMstore now recognizes and reports vCenter tags and can be used for filtering objects in the Tintri Global Center (TGC) user interface (UI). vSphere tags can also be used in service groups to ensure protection policies, snapshots, replication. vSphere tags also carry across the Tintri ecosystem and are available for use with Tintri Analytics. Additional Hardware and Software Validation – 2TB, 4TB or 8TB drives are configurable with all VMstore T7000 systems, allowing customers to tailor the configuration to meet specific business needs. The T7000 systems are also now certified for DAC connections, joining MPO-12 configurations. In addition, VMstore is CitrixReady certified with Hypervisor 8.2. Improved Visibility with UI Enhancements – System admins now can configure and filter alerts with notifications and additional parameters, including Engine ID, which can be configured with Single Network Management Protocol (SNMP). A new "Task Manager" in the UI allows customers to track long running activities and monitor status, as well as reporting on advanced battery backup health to provide fortified data protection in the event of a T7000 series system power loss. NFS 4.1 Beta – VMstore T7000 models now support NFS v4.1 for VMware vSphere, which will be made generally available later this year. About Tintri Tintri, a wholly owned subsidiary of DataDirect Networks (DDN) delivers unique outcomes in Enterprise data centers. Tintri's AI-enabled intelligent infrastructure learns your environment to drive automation. Analytical insights help you simplify and accelerate your operations and empower data-driven business insights. Thousands of Tintri customers have saved millions of management hours using Tintri.

Read More

Vsphere

Lightbits Labs Wins 2022 BIG Innovation Award

Lightbits Labs | January 18, 2022

Lightbits Labs (Lightbits), the first software-defined and NVMe-based data platform for any cloud, is pleased to announce it has been named a winner in the 2022 BIG Innovation Awards presented by the Business Intelligence Group. This is recognition for the company’s unique Complete Data Platform, which is an innovative architecture of NVMe/TCP, Intelligent Flash Management, and VMware vSphere 7 Update 3 compatibility that delivers high performance, simplicity, and cost-efficiency for VMware environments. As such, Lightbits, the inventor of NVMe/TCP, is quickly becoming the defacto standard for managing, analyzing, and storing data on any cloud. Leveraging NVMe/TCP protocol and a shared storage architecture, Lightbits delivers the lowest latencies and highest scalability while delivering performance equivalent to local flash. Lightbits solves the storage challenges for cloud-centric applications with greater efficiency than proprietary appliances and when combined with VMWare vSphere is giant leap forward in delivering an end-to-end NVMe solutions ecosystem. This recognition is further validation that Lightbits fills a critical need for modern IT organizations looking to inject efficiency and agility into the data center. We invented NVMe/TCP, its native to the software, and thus delivers all the low latency and high performance of local flash. And Lightbits is the only solution available with Intelligent Flash Management for maximum cost-efficiency. So, while we may pause to appreciate this recognition, we’ll keep making BIG innovations that enable customers to efficiently leverage their IT investments to extract maximum value from their data.” Carol Platz, Vice President of Marketing, Lightbits Labs “Innovation is driving growth in the global economy,” said Maria Jimenez, chief operating officer of the Business Intelligence Group. “We are thrilled to be honoring Lightbits as they are one of the organizations leading this charge and helping humanity progress.” About Lightbits Labs Lightbits Labs (Lightbits) is leading the digital data center transformation by making high-performance elastic block storage available to any cloud. Creators of the NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) protocol, Lightbits software-defined storage is easy to deploy at scale and delivers performance equivalent to local flash to accelerate cloud-native applications in bare metal, virtual, or containerized environments. Backed by leading enterprise investors including Cisco Investments, Dell Technologies Capital, Intel Capital, and Micron, Lightbits is on a mission to make high-performance elastic block storage simple, scalable and cost-efficient for any cloud. The NVMe, and NVMe/TCP word marks are registered or unregistered service marks of the NVM Express organization in the United States and other countries. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use strictly prohibited. About Business Intelligence Group The Business Intelligence Group was founded with the mission of recognizing true talent and superior performance in the business world. Unlike other industry award programs, these programs are judged by business executives having experience and knowledge. The organization’s proprietary and unique scoring system selectively measures performance across multiple business domains and then rewards those companies whose achievements stand above those of their peers.

Read More

Virtual Server Infrastructure, Vsphere, Hyper-V

Innovative MSP Trusts Scale Computing to Modernize its IT Infrastructure and Boost its Bottom Line

Prnewswire | April 20, 2023

Scale Computing, the market leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions, today announced Managed Services Provider (MSP) customer success with its SC//Fleet Manager solution, the first cloud-hosted monitoring and management tool built for hyperconverged edge computing infrastructure at scale. Integrated directly into the Scale Computing Platform, SC//Fleet Manager consolidates real-time conditions for a fleet of clusters, including storage and compute resources, allowing IT leaders to quickly identify areas of concern from a single pane of glass. Cat-Tec, an MSP based in Ontario, Canada, provides enterprise-level computer network consulting to small and mid-sized businesses. Before modernizing its infrastructure with Scale Computing, Cat-Tec relied on a combination of Nutanix, VMware, and Hyper-V virtualization technologies to run its infrastructure and resell to its customers. However, they soon realized that the cost and complexity of deploying these systems were limiting their ability to scale their business and secure new customers. "While our clients all have very different operating requirements, they all have one thing in common – they want to spend less time troubleshooting their technology stack and more time focused on running their business," said Genito Isabella, co-founder and VP of Systems Integration for Cat-Tec. "Every hour that one of our IT professionals spends manually updating firmware on a server or trying to correctly diagnose a performance issue is time that could be spent on other strategic, revenue-generating projects." To overcome these challenges, Cat-Tec decided it was time to invest in a modern hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution that could help their team manage and scale their distributed infrastructure in a more efficient, cost-effective, and holistic manner. Following a rigorous vendor evaluation process, Cat-Tec selected Scale Computing due to the simplicity of its modular architecture, the ability of SC//Fleet Manager to monitor and manage multiple clusters from a single console, as well as the SC//Platform's native integration with leading third-party backup systems which ensures resilience in the event of a system-wide disruption. "We estimate that the ability to pre-stage hardware has saved us an average of four hours per deployment per client implementation. Meanwhile, using SC//Fleet Manager to proactively troubleshoot issues remotely has dramatically improved our ability to meet our SLAs," continued Isabella. "This means we can now devote more time helping customers solve real problems rather than just constantly having to put out fires. It's not an exaggeration to say that Scale Computing has completely transformed our business." About Scale Computing Scale Computing is a leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions. Using patented HyperCore™ technology, Scale Computing Platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and corrects infrastructure problems in real-time, enabling applications to achieve maximum uptime, even when local IT resources and staff are scarce. Edge Computing is the fastest-growing area of IT infrastructure, and industry analysts have named Scale Computing an outperformer and leader in the space, including being named the #1 edge computing vendor by CRN. Scale Computing's products are sold by thousands of value-added resellers, integrators, and service providers worldwide. When ease of use, high availability, and TCO matter, Scale Computing Platform is the ideal infrastructure platform. Read what our customers have to say on Gartner Peer Insights, Spiceworks, TechValidate, G2, and Trust Radius.

Read More

Vsphere

Tintri Continues Exponential Growth with 2H 2021 Earnings

Tintri | February 21, 2022

Tintri, a DDN subsidiary and the leading provider of auto adaptive, workload intelligent platforms, announced 42% global revenue growth from 1H2021 to 2H2021, including a double-digit revenue increase from net new logos. This expansion is fuelled by Tintri's enhanced global executive sales team and continued VMstore innovation, driving the company's mission to deliver hands-off, cutting-edge and highly adaptive technology to help enterprises manage complex infrastructures. Tintri has had exponential growth in the second half of 2021, driven by the upswell in demand from our customers due to the popularity of containerized applications in virtualized environments. The containerization movement is making serious headway into enterprise data processes and platforms, and Tintri is perfectly positioned to service these emerging markets. We've put together an outstanding global sales team to ensure that customers know our technology was architected for these types of workloads from day one." Phil Trickovic, senior vice president of Revenue, Tintri Enhanced Global Executive Sales Team Following the appointment of a new executive team in Q4 2021, Tintri's latest investment to operate under strong management comes with the newly structured global executive sales team. Comprised of Tintri veterans with invaluable experience, this team best understands the unique challenges of data-centric enterprise customers and the ways in which Tintri's technology can help overcome specialized pain points and evolve to continue to meet enterprise's changing needs. The new global executive sales team is comprised of: Zachary Bertamini, vice president of Sales, Americas, whose strategic vision has been a catalyst to fuel Tintri's growth in the Americas over the past year. Josh Marlar, vice president of Global Business Development, who is responsible for building a multimillion-dollar net new pipeline quarter over quarter and brings over a decade of experience in IT business developments. Mark Walsh, vice president of Sales, EMEA, who brings over 30 years of experience in the IT storage sector and re-joins Tintri from IBM. Norimasa Ono, general manager of Sales, Japan, who led start up efforts in the Japanese market and brings strong relationships with local resellers and enterprise customers, as well as the ability to open new markets for Tintri. Continued VMstore Innovation Tintri continues to innovate, constantly enhancing, updating and advancing capabilities for its customers. This dedication is underscored by VMstore's double-digit revenue growth YoY. The latest releases to VMstore, the world's most intelligent virtual data management system, include: vSphere Tag Support – VMstore now recognizes and reports vCenter tags and can be used for filtering objects in the Tintri Global Center (TGC) user interface (UI). vSphere tags can also be used in service groups to ensure protection policies, snapshots, replication. vSphere tags also carry across the Tintri ecosystem and are available for use with Tintri Analytics. Additional Hardware and Software Validation – 2TB, 4TB or 8TB drives are configurable with all VMstore T7000 systems, allowing customers to tailor the configuration to meet specific business needs. The T7000 systems are also now certified for DAC connections, joining MPO-12 configurations. In addition, VMstore is CitrixReady certified with Hypervisor 8.2. Improved Visibility with UI Enhancements – System admins now can configure and filter alerts with notifications and additional parameters, including Engine ID, which can be configured with Single Network Management Protocol (SNMP). A new "Task Manager" in the UI allows customers to track long running activities and monitor status, as well as reporting on advanced battery backup health to provide fortified data protection in the event of a T7000 series system power loss. NFS 4.1 Beta – VMstore T7000 models now support NFS v4.1 for VMware vSphere, which will be made generally available later this year. About Tintri Tintri, a wholly owned subsidiary of DataDirect Networks (DDN) delivers unique outcomes in Enterprise data centers. Tintri's AI-enabled intelligent infrastructure learns your environment to drive automation. Analytical insights help you simplify and accelerate your operations and empower data-driven business insights. Thousands of Tintri customers have saved millions of management hours using Tintri.

Read More

Vsphere

Lightbits Labs Wins 2022 BIG Innovation Award

Lightbits Labs | January 18, 2022

Lightbits Labs (Lightbits), the first software-defined and NVMe-based data platform for any cloud, is pleased to announce it has been named a winner in the 2022 BIG Innovation Awards presented by the Business Intelligence Group. This is recognition for the company’s unique Complete Data Platform, which is an innovative architecture of NVMe/TCP, Intelligent Flash Management, and VMware vSphere 7 Update 3 compatibility that delivers high performance, simplicity, and cost-efficiency for VMware environments. As such, Lightbits, the inventor of NVMe/TCP, is quickly becoming the defacto standard for managing, analyzing, and storing data on any cloud. Leveraging NVMe/TCP protocol and a shared storage architecture, Lightbits delivers the lowest latencies and highest scalability while delivering performance equivalent to local flash. Lightbits solves the storage challenges for cloud-centric applications with greater efficiency than proprietary appliances and when combined with VMWare vSphere is giant leap forward in delivering an end-to-end NVMe solutions ecosystem. This recognition is further validation that Lightbits fills a critical need for modern IT organizations looking to inject efficiency and agility into the data center. We invented NVMe/TCP, its native to the software, and thus delivers all the low latency and high performance of local flash. And Lightbits is the only solution available with Intelligent Flash Management for maximum cost-efficiency. So, while we may pause to appreciate this recognition, we’ll keep making BIG innovations that enable customers to efficiently leverage their IT investments to extract maximum value from their data.” Carol Platz, Vice President of Marketing, Lightbits Labs “Innovation is driving growth in the global economy,” said Maria Jimenez, chief operating officer of the Business Intelligence Group. “We are thrilled to be honoring Lightbits as they are one of the organizations leading this charge and helping humanity progress.” About Lightbits Labs Lightbits Labs (Lightbits) is leading the digital data center transformation by making high-performance elastic block storage available to any cloud. Creators of the NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) protocol, Lightbits software-defined storage is easy to deploy at scale and delivers performance equivalent to local flash to accelerate cloud-native applications in bare metal, virtual, or containerized environments. Backed by leading enterprise investors including Cisco Investments, Dell Technologies Capital, Intel Capital, and Micron, Lightbits is on a mission to make high-performance elastic block storage simple, scalable and cost-efficient for any cloud. The NVMe, and NVMe/TCP word marks are registered or unregistered service marks of the NVM Express organization in the United States and other countries. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use strictly prohibited. About Business Intelligence Group The Business Intelligence Group was founded with the mission of recognizing true talent and superior performance in the business world. Unlike other industry award programs, these programs are judged by business executives having experience and knowledge. The organization’s proprietary and unique scoring system selectively measures performance across multiple business domains and then rewards those companies whose achievements stand above those of their peers.

Read More

Events