In this post I have created a general-purpose Best Practices guideline for VMware vSphere, including references. I base these Best Practices recommendations on my personal, and VMsources collective experience, in dealing with hundreds (if not thousands, at this point) of unique client environments over the last decade. My intent is to help VMware users of
Read More »
Hardened / Immutable Backups are the equivalent of “air gapped,” tape, or WORM backups, rendering your data nearly untouchable by Threat Actors! Hardened / Immutable Backups are accomplished through the use of a Linux repository server, the XFS filesystem (to support Fast Clone), one-time-use credentials, and the immutability flag which is a property of just
Read More »
VMsources has created a Virtual Appliance in OVA format, following Veeam Best Practices as nearly as possible for a Virtual Machine, making it easy for anybody to mount an iSCSI LUN as a Veeam Hardened / Immutable Repository. Not everybody is fond of Linux or the CLI, so we have created an OVA Virtual Appliance
Read More »
Veeam Backup and Replication 11 is a true game-changer with its Immutable Backup feature. Moving forward, Veeam Immutable Backups will free organizations from the hassle of physical tape libraries as well as eliminating the need for expensive “virtual tape libraries,” all while providing easily manageable backup chains. Veeam Immutable Backups are the equivalent of “air
Read More »
I have to confess that I have always thought of NFS for vSphere as being a second-tier choice. Even the best solutions from well known vendors using 10GbE and SSD, NFS datastores always seem to under-perform and be more problematic as compared to block-storage SAN devices. Even with the theoretical reduction of overhead per payload
Read More »
Timekeeping on ESXi Hosts is a particularly important, yet often overlooked or misunderstood topic among vSphere Administrators. I recall a recent situation where I created an anti-affinity DRS rule (separate virtual machines) for a customer’s domain controllers. Although ESXi time was correctly configured, the firewall had been recently changed and no longer allowed NTP. As
Read More »
Building Mission Critical VMs on VMware vSphere is pretty simple. There are just a few commonly acknowledged Best Practices with which to adhere, regardless of whether you are installing Windows or Linux: Use Paravirtualized drivers wherever possible Remove unnecessary hardware from the VM (settings) Disable unnecessary or unused devices in BIOS Assign no more resources
Read More »
In Part one of this exercise, I am going to show you how to get and install VMware® Workstation™ Pro, and then build your ESXi Hosts (servers) as Virtual Machines.
Over the years, a number of common misconceptions about infrastructure Virtualization have taken hold and even gained widespread acceptance. I hope to factually debunk some of these myths, and possibly discover more myths in the process!