just another blog about virtualization, technology and other stuff
Dear readers,
at first I want to make some announcements because my life changed radically: new job, city and a whole new life setting at all.
The last months were exciting and exhausting with a lot of work, despite that I enjoyed every second to be alive in this time of huge potentials.
Hi everybody,
in reference to my prior article vSAN – High Available Solution this article will explain the basic architecture and give you some insight into the technical details.
Hi there,
after passing the VCAP Deploy exam, I successfully passed the VCAP Design exam. Thereby I am now VSphere Certified Implementation Expert Data Center Virtualization 6. (VCIX6-DCV)
Furthermore I tinker with the idea of completing the data center track. Which requires a vast expenditure both monetary and time consuming. The requirement is to successfully submit and defend an original design in front of a panel of experts. In Europe this is just possible in Staines, UK.
This process is far more complex than any other exam that exists in the IT universe. Currently there are just 264 VCDX certified people around the world, collectively over all tracks.
Along the way I prepare myself for the NCDA – Netapp Certified Data Administrator certification. Due to my participation at Insight 2017 in Berlin last week I know Netapp and Clustered Ontap will keep me occupied over the next years too. Really awesome data fabric features that will shape both private and public clouds.
BR, Nicolas Frey
Hello everybody,
got a new topic for you called VMWare vSAN which stands for virtual storage area network. This article will be an introduction in order to get a picture of the matter.
In the next part of this series I plan to write about all the features that come with it. Afterwards the architecture powered by an real life example will be explained. In the end I plan to really dive deep. A best practice series will follow which summarizes my experience and hopefully helps some desperate souls.
So to start, in the old days SAN was a very complex architecture which consists of storage arrays, network switches, fiber channel fabrics, (a redundant array of SAN switches) storage controllers, disk shelves and a lot of cabling. These silos had their own complex management and you needed a bunch of experts to implement the custom solution. In the end all that you got was some (high available) mass storage which you could access via different protocols like CIFS, NFS, iSCSI and FC over the Ethernet or Fibrechannel over a dedicated storage network. Mostly no quality of service and very expensive. Furthermore it was the era of spinning disks which were power consuming, high latency and error-prone.
Besides the “old” dedicated storage approach another solution was invented. Nowadays you get not only storage but the whole stack. Computing, network and storage – on just a set of conventional servers with local (flash) disks. All components are abstracted and managed by a software. The term – software defined data center or in our case – software defined storage – emerged. This package offers a new idea of an economical, scale-able, low latency, high performance, compact, easy to administrate, maintainable, secure, feature heavy and future-proof solution.
This solution is called hyper-converged infrastructure and familiar software/hardware vendors, which I got a boundary-point with, are: DELL/VMWare, Nutanix and Simplivity.
As mentioned above I will start with the features of vSAN 6.6 in the next blog article so stay tuned.
Best wishes
Nicolas Frey
Sorry for the late update.
First of all I have to thank the whole VMWare staff and all participants for this awesome time. Almost every part of the event was precisely planned. Especially none of the Breakout-Sessions had any delay or inconvenience.
Continue reading “VMWorld Barcelona 2017 – DAY 3 and DAY 4 and conclusion”
Hi folks,
arrived on Sunday via plane in Barcelona with about a hour delay due to high load at Barca airport. Check in at SB Plaza Europe around 11 pm. The location of the hotel is very nice. The Fira Grand Via (the fair where the VMWorld takes place) is in walking distance.
Next day I was very excited to take part at VMWorld for the first time. Got up very early and did a small workout in the fitness center at the hotel. Went for breakfast and again the coffee was the game changer. In addition the weather was awesome. Therefore I used the remaining time to go to the roof and shoot a picture that makes you jealous.
tldr? -> go for the pictures
Hello everybody,
some weeks ago I announced my participation at Mammutmarsch 2017 in Munich – 100km in under 24h. Besides that the total rise of altitude was ~1100 meters!!! This weekend on Saturday afternoon I started the long walk.
Hi there,
got a new announcement for you.
Next month on Saturday the 05.08 I will attend a mind boggling 100km walk called Mammutmarsch. At some point i try to run a part of the distance. In any case the time limit is 24h. Registration is still open if you like to participate :).
Start and finish is in Munich and I will pass by two major lakes in Bavaria, Starnberger See and Ammersee. Challange accepted!
Furthermore the next defiance will be the Bodensee marathon on 16th September. Two days after the VMWorld, the excellent balance.
Pictures will follow.
Best regards
Nicolas Frey
Hello everbody,
last week on Thursday I attended a very nice event in the WWK – Arena in Augsburg. The host was Netapp and a lot of topics in form of presentations were covered. In addition I met a lot of sympathetic people.
I participated in various sessions and I listed the key facts of my favourites below:
Hardware and ONTAP 9.2
DevOps and Container
GDPR – General data protection Regulation
Ontap and Cloud
Control of Hybrid Cloud
Hello everybody,
great news, this year I will be able to attend the VMworld for the first time, held from 11.09 until 14.09.2017 in Barcelona. Last year visitor count was about 20000 and Empire of The Sun was rocking the vmworld party :).
I am looking forward to take part at some fascinating speeches, speak with experts and investigate the newest innovations in the vmware universe.
Besides that I am very interested in discoverning the newest products from this years sponsors like Dell EMC, Intel, Veeam, Fortinet, Nvidia and QNAP.
Twitter will be used during the event.
After the exhibiton you will get a full report about the key facts, also I will try to take some nice pictures.
Maybe there will be an participation in an other big event, stay tuned for another disclosure.
Best regards,
Nicolas Frey