Category: How to guides

A siries of step-by-step guides, complete with screenshots and supporting downloads.

Hardened / Immutable Backup Repository Appliance

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
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Immutable Repository OVA for Veeam Backup and Replication 11

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
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VMware vSphere and Time

I’ve been harping about this for years, but a couple of recent customer situations have emphasized the importance of correct time/NTP configuration for all of your vSphere components. In one situation, incorrect time configuration almost completely broke a Nutanix Storage cluster! There was no problem with Nutanix or VMware, but rather networking challenges prevented the
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Setting the coredump partition when using vSAN

I was designing a customer vSAN deployment and I came across the guidelines and formula for calculating the required ESXi Coredump partition size: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147881 Right away, I started working the formula for my customers deployment, when it occurred to me; this is WAY more complicated than it needs to be! VMware actually wants you to take
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Virtual Machine Hardware Version does make a difference

For years, I have dismissed Virtual Machine Hardware version as unimportant. In fact, in this very blog, I may have advocated for leaving VM Hardware Version set at 8, to maintain full compatibility with both the vSphere C# Client and the vSphere Web Client. Unfortunately, thanks to Spectre and Meltdown, things have changed. Updating your
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