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VMware Validated Design (VVD) & VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Quick References

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The other day, I had a customer ask about the latest version of the Ports and Protocols document that was put together by the VMware Validated Design (VVD) team which does a fantastic job of outlining all the connectivity between the products used within the VVD SDDC. It actually took me awhile to find after realizing it was posted on the VMTN Community rather than the official documentation page.

I also came across other VVD content that I thought would also be useful for customers and decided to create a VVD "Quick Reference" that organizes all of this content into a single place. In addition, I also created a nice short URL to the quick reference so you only have to remember that. After sharing this on Twitter yesterday, Ryan Johnson (TMM for VVD/VCF) got inspired and also created VMware Cloud Foundation Quick Reference which I also built a short URL for. If there is other content that you would like to see, feel free to drop me or Ryan a comment or better yet, submit a pull request on the Github page!

To access the Quick References, use the following short URLs:

Below is a quick screenshot of both the VVD and VCF Quick References:

Exclusive vGhetto discount on homelab hardware from MITXPC

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On a regular basis I already receive a number of inquires from both internal VMware folks as well as external partners and customers about VMware homelabs and the type of hardware that can be used. After demo'ing our recent USB to SDDC project, the requests have literally tripled! Most folks are generally inquiring BOM details and/or where to purchase the Intel NUC or the SuperMicro E200-8D.

In particular, the SuperMicro E200-8D has probably received the most amount of interest lately. In fact, I am also interested in one after having an opportunity to play with one during the Melbourne VMUG. One thing I had noticed while talking to several colleagues who have purchased this system both locally within the Bay Area as well as overseas such as Australia was that one particular reseller kept coming up over and over again. That vendor was MITXPC which is a local bay area company located over in Fremont which specializes in Mini-ITX systems.

The reason MITXPC was being used by the majority of these folks was simple, they had the best price for the SuperMicro E200-8D which was significantly cheaper than other vendors including Amazon.

Vendor Price
E200-8D on MITXPC $799 USD ($783.02 w/discount code)
E200-8D on Amazon $849 USD

Having heard good things about MITXPC, I decided to reach out to them and see if there was anything special they could do for the VMware Community. I was able to get a special discount code that would offer folks an additional 2% off their entire purchase at MITXPC. For those of you who have been holding off on a refresh your home lab or itching to build your own, this is a great time! If you would like to take advantage of this offer, simply use the discount code VIRTUALLYGHETTO2OFF when you check out. I would like to give a huge thanks to Eric Yui of MITXPC for working with me on this and helping out the VMware Community.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with MITXPC.

Minimum permissions to view VM Storage Policies

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I saw this question from Aaron yesterday while scrolling through my Twitter timeline and after answering it, I figure I write a quick blog post about it in case this comes up in the future.

There are two specific privileges around managing VM Storage Policies: Update and View as shown in the screenshot below. If you only want to allow users to be able to see all the available VM Storage Policies that have been defined, then you just need to create a new Role with only the "View" privilege.

Secondly, it is important to note that VM Storage Policies are defined and managed at a vCenter Server level. This means that when you assign the permission, it needs to be applied at the root vCenter Server level (you do not have to propagate it down wards if you do not wish to show the rest of the vSphere Inventory). Global permissions are not required, but if you have multiple vCenter Servers which are all part of the same SSO Domain, you may want to consider this if users are allowed to login to any one of the vCenter Servers.

Once you have assigned the permission to either the user or group, then you can have them login using either the vSphere Web Client or using the SBPM APIs and you will now be able to view all defined VM Storage Policies.