Last week I had a requirement to look at how to allow customers to export VM’s and vApps from our vCloud Director Zones without using the UI. I’ve known about the OVFTool for a while but never really had the need to use it in anger…for those that don’t know the OVFTool is a command line tool […] Read More
HOW-TO: Install PIP and VCA-CLI for vCloud Air|Director on Windows
There is a lot of talk going around how IT Pros can more efficiently operate and consume Cloud Based Services…AWS has lead the way in offering a rich set of APIs for it’s clients to use to help build out cloud applications and infrastructure and there are a ton of programming libraries and platforms that […] Read More
NSX Edge vs vShield Edge: Part 3 – IPsec and L2 VPN
Overview: NSX and vShield Edges support site to site IPSec VPN between Edge instances and remote sites. Behind each remote VPN router, you can configure multiple subnets to connect to the internal network behind an Edge through IPSec tunnels. These subnets and the internal network behind the Edges must have address ranges that do not overlap. You […] Read More
vCloud Director SP: VM Metrics Database Configuration Part 2
vCloud Director SP 5.6.x has the ability to export VM statistics to an external database source which can then be queried via a set of new API calls. I’ve gone through a couple of different posts on how to configure the Cassandra/KairosDB data platform. vCloud Director SP: VM Metrics Database Configuration Part 1 Installing and […] Read More
Quick Fix: vCloud Air Gateway Unreachable
I’ve just come across a situation in my vCloud Air On Demand Service where the Edge Gateway was showing up as unreachable. Given vCloud Director is backing the vCloud Air Platform I identified this as a rare, but familiar occurrence of the vShield Edge VM either not being deploying correctly, or somehow loosing connectivity with its […] Read More
Announced: Veeam 9 Cloud Connect Replication For Service Providers
Last week Veeam announced that version 9 of Backup & Replication will feature a new addition to it’s Cloud Connect product…Replication for Service Providers. The version 8 functionality will be extended to include advanced image-based VM replication. The extended functionality will give service providers the ability to provide clients with RaaS (recovery-as-a-service) in the form of Veeam […] Read More
NSX Edge vs vShield Edge: Part 2 – High Availability
Overview: High Availability in both VSE and NSX Edges ensures Edge Network Services are always available by deploying a pair of Edge Appliances that work together in an active/passive HA cluster Pair. The primary appliance is in the active state and the secondary appliance is in the standby state. The configuration of the primary appliance is replicated […] Read More
vCloud Director SP: Upgrading and Applying New License Key
Thought I’d put up a very quick post on the process of upgrading from vCloud Director 5.5.x to vCloud Director SP 5.6.x. Any previous license key that you had associated with your vCD instance will not work once you upgrade to the SP Build. After you upgrade using the vCD SP 5.6.x binaries…upon first login […] Read More
NSX Edge vs vShield Edge: Part 1 – Feature and Performance Matrix
I was having a discussion internally about why we where looking to productize the NSX Edges for our vCloud Director Virtual Datacenter offering over the existing vCNS vShield Edges. A quick search online didn’t come up with anything concrete so I’ve decided to list out the differences as concisely as possible. This post will go through […] Read More
vCloud Director 8.0 Beta Kick Off – Initial Thoughts and Reaction
As posted a couple of weeks ago the Beta Program for the new SP Release of vCloud Director was announced and the kickoff was held yesterday morning (1st of June) Pacific time. When I joined the call there where about 200 other callers signed in which must have been a pleasing number for the vCD Team and […] Read More