VCF

vSAN – encryption, checksum and data reduction features in I/O flow

Let’s quick remind ourselves I/O flow and how do checksum calculation and disk encryption work in conjunction with deduplication and compression on vSAN All-Flash cluster while creating/modifying new vmdk. 1. Checksum – functionality to avoid data integrity issues – is calculated before writing data (the block) to the caching tier. vSAN created 5-byte checksum for […]

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vIDM 3.3.5 deployment using vRSLCM 8.5 REST API in VCF (4.3.1) Aware Mode

Some time ago I described the installation process of VMware Identity Manager 3.3.0 with vRealize Lifecycle Manager 2.1 using Ansible (link here). That time the only possible option to install vIDM with vRSLCM was a single node with internal PostgresSQL database. vRSLCM 2.x does not perform cluster-based installations of VMware Identity Manager. Fortunately it has […]

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Upgrading to VCF 4.3.1

Two weeks ago VCF 4.3.1 has been released and few hours later I had an opportunity to test upgrade procedure. In this post I will show you how to upgrade VCF software, NSX-T, vCenter, ESXi hosts and vRealize Suite components if you have vRealize Suite deployed in your environment. It’s a pretty straight forward process. […]

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VCF 4.1 – update vSAN license key in the failed ‘Add Cluster’ workflow

When you add new vSphere cluster to the management or VI workload domain and provide expired or invalid vSAN license key, the subtask ‘Apply vSAN License in vCenter Server’ will fail:  In /var/log/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/domainmanager.log you can find more details: 2021-04-21T11:53:22.184+0000 WARN [vcf_dm,9f492adb1719ed65,0ae2] [c.v.e.s.c.c.v.vsphere.VcManagerBase,dm-exec-8] VSAN license verification failed – assuming vSAN license not applied 2021-04-21T11:53:22.184+0000 DEBUG [vcf_dm,9f492adb1719ed65,0ae2] […]

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VCF 4.0 – file-based backup configuration via API

To configure a file-based backup schedule for the SDDC Manager VM you must use the Cloud Foundation API because it’s not possible to configure it via GUI. BUT, before you can use the VMware Cloud Foundation API to configure a backup schedule, you must enable the feature creating properties file (feature.properties) in the /home/vcf directory […]

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VCF 4.0.1 – Cloud Builder deployment with Ansible

As we all know, lazy sysadmin is the best sysadmin so even few clicks may cause you feel exhausted. That’s why I wrote Ansible role to automate VCF Cloud Builder deployment using ‘vmware_deploy_ovf’ module. Of course some OVA property keys were needed, but they can be found under ProductSection in OVF descriptor. This ansible role is for […]

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VCF 3.9 on VxRail 4.7.300 – manage certificate for VxRail Manager using Ansible.

Few posts ago i described how to automate certificates management for all VCF components using Ansible. In VCF versions prior to VCF 3.8, SDDC Manager allows the user to manage certificates of the VMware Cloud Foundation components except VxRail Manager. This post is just a quick update of vars for my ansible role. Just add […]

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