WilliamLam.com

Automating vRealize stack based on VVD using new vRealize Suite Lifecycle Management

by // 1 Comment

Our Cloud Management Business Unit (CMBU) at VMware just GA'ed the highly anticipated vRealize Suite Lifecycle Management or vRSLCM for short. As the name suggests, this new solution provides customers a simple and consistent mechanism for managing the entire lifecycle management (Day 0 to Day N) for all VMware vRealize Products including but not limited to Install, Upgrade, Configuration Management, Drift Remediation and Health Monitoring. vRSLCM is delivered as a Virtual Appliance which can be used in either a greenfield and/or existing brownfield environment. You can also manage multiple environments that consists of different vRealize products that have been deployed giving customers 100% visibility into all their different vRealize environments using a single interface. For more information, be sure to check out this blog post here.


One specific feature that I think is worth calling out and not because our team was involved with it is the ability to deploy what vRSLCM calls "Solutions". These Solutions not only correspond to the specific vRealize products being deployed but they also align to the three VMware Validated Design 4.1 Use Cases: IT Automating IT, Micro-Segmentation and Intelligent Operations as shown in the screenshot below.


This means for customers who wish to deploy the vRealize stack based on the VMware Validated Designs can now easily do so by simply selecting one of these solutions and providing their environment specific information such as DNS, NTP, etc. and vRSLCM will deploy and configure the vRealize products as prescribed in the VVD. Customers no longer have to manually read through pages and pages of documentation to get the desired outcome. [Read more...]

VMworld Hackathon 2017 Highlights

by // Leave a Comment

This was our second year running the Hackathon at VMworld and Alan and I could not have been more pleased with all the positive and supportive feedback that we have received. The Hackathon was definitely a highlight for us as it was for many other VMworld attendees. Having said that, the Hackathon did come in a very close #2 for us in VMworld Europe as our very own Alan Renouf took center stage with our CEO Pat Gelsinger for the Day 1 Keynote which you can watch here.

There were so many great highlights at both the US and Europe VMworld Hackathon, it was hard to just mention a few. I thought I would be nice to pull together all this content and share it back with the community, especially for those who missed out on the Hackathon this year and have now regretted not joining 😉 Do not worry, you can make up for it next year! It was also very cool to see the VMworld Hackathon influence the VMUG Community with the Pittsburg VMUG running their own "mini" Hackathon which they dubbed #PGHlittlehacks, you can read more about it here.

I also wanted to give a huge thanks to the VMware Code team, if it was not for them and their support, the Hackathon would have not been possible. Not only did we double the size of the teams by 2x for both US (7 to 15 teams) and Europe (5 to 10 teams), but we also recieved a larger budget this year for better hardware, giveaways and more activities like the Hackathon Trainings. If you are not part of VMware Code, be sure to sign up here and also be sure to give them feedback on things you like at the Hackathon as well as things we could improve on. You can reach them on Twitter @vmwarecode or Slack them https://vmwarecode.slack.com. I also wanted thank our esteemed judges here and here for taking time out of their busy VMworld schedule and spending several hours with us, we know you could have been anywhere, but you decided to hang out with us! Lastly, thanks to the VMworld TV folks for stopping by and having a chat with us.

Alan and I really appreciate all the kind words that we have received in the last few weeks and we hope to see you in next years VMworld Hackathon!

FYI - In the coming week, I will be posting more information about the Hackathon hardware BOM as well as the slick vSphere Web Client UI customization, so stay tuned.

Blogs:

Twitter Comments:

Videos:

VMworld TV Interview:

Time-Lapse Video by Lars Troen:

Hackathon Team Presentations by Lars Troen:

Pictures:


             US Pictures - https://github.com/lamw/vmworld-hackathon/tree/master/2017-USA-Pictures


             Europe Pictures - https://github.com/lamw/vmworld-hackathon/tree/master/2017-BCN-Pictures

US Hackathon Training:

US/EU Hackathon Github Repos:

Hackathon Hardware/Software BOM:

ATTO's ESXi Thunderbolt Driver is now officially on VMware HCL

by // 1 Comment

Last week I had received some great news from our friends over at ATTO Technology that their ESXi Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel Driver has passed the VMware Certification process and is now officially listed on VMware's HCL. I had known the team was planning to certify their driver but was not aware of their timelines and whether it would actually get accepted given the fact that this was for a Thunderbolt-based device, which is the first of its kind for the VMware HCL.

Funny enough, it was roughly around this time last year that ATTO released a Beta of their ESXi Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel Driver which I had shared with my readers here. I was not surprised by the demand given the fact that no official solutions exists for customers who would like to take advantage of their existing SAN-based storage infrastructure when virtualizing Apple macOS (iOS development, etc) on vSphere. ATTO has certified two of their ThunderLink devices, customers have the option of using either the TLFC2082 which provides 20Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 (2-port) to 8Gb/s FC (2-Port) Device or the TLFC2182 which provides 20Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 (2-port) to 16Gb/s FC (2-Port) Device which is supported from ESXi 5.5u3 all the way up to latest 6.5u1 release.


Click here for the direct link to VMware HCL.

Huge congrats to the ATTO team for getting this on the VMware HCL and partnering up with VMware to provide a solution for our customers who virtualize Apple macOS using vSphere!

Lastly, if you are going to be at VMworld and you are interested in learning more about this solution, be sure to drop by the ATTO booth.