Clearpath’s Blog on IT Infrastructure, Hybrid Clouds and IT Security

As the end of general support for both vSphere 5.5 and vSAN 5.5 approaches in this fall—many CIOs and IT directors are wondering if upgrading to the latest version of vSphere is a wise move beyond just the comfort of running a supported version of the product.  After all—VMs are pretty standard fare for data centers today.  What can a new version of vSphere really offer?

First of all—many people are hailing vSphere 6.5 as the most beneficial upgrade in years, and customers are moving it into production environments at an unprecedented rate.  The impending end of general support only accounts for some of that production adoption—the remainder resides in the strengths and benefits of vSphere 6.5.  In fact—vSphere 6.5 if the foundation of VMware’s hybrid cloud strategy moving forward—and is required for cross-cloud architectures.  This fact alone may account for its rapid adoption, but let’s explore a bit further.

Topics: VMware, vSphere, vSphere 6.5, vSphere Upgrade

The move to hyper-converged infrastructures (HCI) is on! 

However, many CIOs hit the brakes when it comes to knowing how to implement HCI initiatives and not wreck the IT budget.  Certainly—one doesn’t want to replace all the existing equipment in the data center with converged infrastructure appliances all at once.  Is there a way to use existing infrastructure and still take advantage of hyper-convergence and software-defined infrastructure while planning for equipment replacements down the road?

The simple answer is YES.  And by building on existing infrastructure and leveraging commodity x86 equipment—CIOs can experience significant CapEx savings compared to hardware replacements.  Certainly CIOs’ ears prick up when they hear figures of nearly 50% savings,¹ but what does this mean for an IT department?  Are there any other advantages to creating a virtual SAN now versus just waiting to implement HCI appliances as hardware refresh cycles come due?

It is critical that differences between software-defined storage (SDS) and storage virtualization be understood.  While there is some overlap between the two—an ideal solution combines both SDS and storage virtualization for maximum benefit to the organization.

Topics: VMware, vSphere, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, vSAN, HCI

After months of running the vSphere 5.1 appliance in my lab, I decided to install the 5.5 appliance to see just how far this little gem has come.  So, I downloaded and deployed the OVA, and moved onto initial configuration.  After the initial configuration was completed, I decided to tweak some values in the interface.  First and foremost - the DHCP configuration had to go.  Followed by setting the host FQDN, which was strangely omitted from the initial configuration.  This made running AD authentication a little difficult since AD integration requires that the appliance have an FQDN before it will accept the configuration.

Topics: vSphere, vCenter

As you may know, there are a number of activities within the vSphere Web Client that are different from that in the vSphere C# Client.  One of these, as I discovered trying to do some reconfiguration in my lab this weekend, is changing the network label for a VMkernel port. Below are steps to change the network label for a VMkernel port in the vSphere 5.1 Web Client.

Topics: VMware, vSphere

Deploying pools can be done using the VMware View Administrator. The Add Pool wizard in the Administrator takes us through a series of steps which include user assignment, pool Identification, provisioning settings, advanced storage options etc. (refer to the figure below). In this article we will learn a different approach to deploying pools - using a powerCLI cmdlet.

Topics: VMware, vSphere, PowerCLI

In this article, we will discuss how to prepare Visual Studio to perform various VMware tasks. VMware PowerCLI is a Windows PowerShell interface for managing and automating various vSphere tasks. Using VMware PowerCLI cmdlets in Visual Studio we can create, customize, or manage vSphere inventory objects.

Topics: VMware, vSphere, PowerCLI

I’ve run into this situation a couple of times now as a consultant - I go on site, we need to make some changes that require (or would at least benefit from) SSH or console access into an ESXi host, but the root password is unknown for any number of reasons - the old admin who set it left, we forgot, whatever. Rather than rebuild the host, here’s a neat trick with Host Profiles to reset the root password.

Topics: VMware, vSphere

Released on April 4, 2013, vCenter Operations Manager makes the next step forward in managing your vSphere environment. 

Topics: Updates, vSphere, vCenter Operations

For the most part, the same group of admins will end up with a need for administrative access to both vCenter Server and ESXi hosts. To facilitate ease of administration, as well as to provide a clear audit trail, ESXi and vCenter Server should authenticate user access through the same identity source. This article will outline how to make ESXi 5.1 and vCenter Server 5.1 (with a little help from Single Sign-On) authenticate against the same identity source, as well as give a group of admins access to both.

Topics: VMware, vSphere, vCenter

During the installation of vCenter Single Sign On (SSO), the installer will attempt to detect the Active Directory (AD) domain for the logged in user and add it as an Identity Source. For the most part, this works fine; however, I’ve run into a couple of instances so far deploying vSphere 5.1 to customers where they either want to add a second AD Identity Source or for one reason or another (running the installer as the local administrator is a typical case), the installer didn’t properly add a non-System-Domain Identity Source.

Topics: VMware, vSphere