VCD Cell Management Tool without Administrator Credentials
I just learned from engineering neat trick related to how cell management tool can be invoked without specifying administrator credentials. The issue is that currently you cannot use LDAP account to...
View ArticlevCloud Connector and Offline Data Transfer
Offline Data Transfer (ODT) is a feature of vCloud Connector that allows migration of VMs from customer own datacenter to vCloud Air with NAS appliance which is shipped via regular mail. The point is...
View ArticlevRealize Automation with Multiple Cloud Endpoints
One of my customers had deployed true hybrid vRealize Automation with multiple cloud endpoints: vCloud Air and internal vCloud Director and AWS. I was called in to troubleshoot strange issue where...
View ArticleTracking Catalog Template Deployments in vCloud Director
A customer asked me how to track deployments of certain catalog templates. This is mainly for licensing or charging purposes where the provider creates and maintains (patches) OS templates which the...
View ArticleWhich Cloud VMs do not have VM Tools Installed?
Quick PowerCLI one-liner which displays all VMs running in vCloud Director together with their VM Tools version. Get-CIVM |Select Name, {$_.Org.Name}, {$_.OrgVdc.Name},...
View ArticlevCloud Director with NSX: Edge Cluster
I see more and more that new and existing vCloud Director deployments leverage NSX as the networking component instead of the legacy vShield / vCloud Network and Security (vCNS). The main reasons are...
View ArticlevCloud Director with NSX: Edge Cluster (Part 2)
In my previous article vCloud Director with NSX: Edge Cluster I described various design options of NSX Edge Cluster in vCloud Director environment. In this article I would like to discuss additional...
View ArticleComplex Nested Lab Running in vCloud Air
My colleague George Kobar recently wrote blog post about running Nested ESXi on vCloud Air. The gist of the article is the description how to solve networking issues around nested virtualization that...
View ArticleLayer 2 VPN to the Cloud
When VMware NSX 6.0 came out about more than one year ago, one of the new great features it had on top of the its predecessor VMware vCloud Network and Security (vCNS) was L2VPN service on Edge Service...
View ArticlevCloud Architecture Toolkit for Service Providers
One of the reasons I have been quiet on my blog lately was today released for public: vCloud Architecture Toolkit for Service Providers. If you are designing vCloud Director based public cloud I hope...
View ArticleFederation of Multiple vCloud Director Instances
While vCloud Director offers impressive scalability with possibility to manage up to 20 vCenter Servers there are valid reasons why service providers deploy multiple vCloud Director instances due to...
View ArticleSource NAT Rule for All Internal Networks in vCloud Director
In order to access external network resources from internal Org VDC networks Source NAT (SNAT) rule must be created on the Edge Gateway which translates internal IP address to a sub-allocated IP...
View ArticlevCloud Director Portal Access over IPv6
I got interesting question from a colleague if vCloud Director portal can be accessed over IPv6. I suspected the answer is yes so I had little bit of fun and did a quick test. With NSX load balancer in...
View ArticleAutomate ESXi Host VTEP Default Gateway
As discussed in my older article VXLAN routed transport network requires to set default gateway of vxlan stack on each ESXi host. While NSX has concept of IP Pools which allows automatic VTEP...
View ArticlevCloud Director: Online Migration of Virtual Data Center – Part II
About two years ago I have written a blog post describing how service provider (with cloud based on vCloud Director) can replace hardware without tenants actually noticing this. The provider can stand...
View ArticleDeploy 500 Edge Gateways in 500 Seconds
I am working on a few vCloud and NSX API scripts that collect data about Edge Gateways and needed to test how they work at scale. With this little PowerShell script leveraging NSX API I created 500...
View ArticleHow to Monitor Health of NSX Edge Gateways
NSX Edge Service Gateways are virtual machines deployed by NSX Manager that provide network services (routing, bridging, load balancing, VPNs, DNS relay, DHCP, …). This makes them quite a critical...
View ArticleMy New Role at VMware
After almost 4 years working for professional services at VMware I am transferring to new Architect role in Global Cloud Practice – vCloud Air Network. I am taking up the challenge to work in a global...
View ArticleRenaming Edge Gateway
Recently one of my customers changed naming convention of vCloud Director Edge Gateways. He renamed them in vCloud Director however the names of virtual machines backing the Edge Gateways stayed the...
View ArticleCustom vCenter Server Event and Alarm
Related to my previous post about monitoring Edge Gateways my customer asked me if he could leverage vCenter Server alarms as they are integrated with their monitoring and alerting infrastructure. So...
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