HCI SDDC vSAN vSphere VxRail

VxRail Upgrade to Version 8.0.xxx

This is an additional post up to my previously released Update Guide and Upgrade Guide with new topics regarding the upgrade to VxRail Version 8.0.xxx. I will add items to this post as soon as there is something new and meaningful. // (3rd party) Solution Compatibility & Interoperability Backup Backup is always the first and …

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general HCI SDDC vSAN vSphere VxRail

VxRail 8.0.000

The VxRail Bundle 8.0.000 including vSphere 8.0 and vSAN 8.0 is available for download since a few days now:https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/vxrail-software/drivers Before initiating a prematurely upgrade I’d like to advise to have a look at the Release Notes first – especially the Key Differences section: https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/vxrail-appliance-series/vxrail_release_notes_8.0/what-is-new-in-vxrail-8.0.000?guid=guid-8693278b-2280-47e0-88d9-4b37a7628cf2&lang=en-us (some of the) Key Differences: VxRail based on the Quanta hardware …

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HCI Security vSAN vSphere VxRail

VxRail Upgrade Guide

After I have written the VxRail Update Guide I wanted to write about major version upgrades as well since there are still some companies out there running VxRail Version 4.7.xxx (which is by now End of General Support). Usually upgrades between major versions are a little bit more complex than updates within the same major …

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HCI vSAN

vSAN 8

Finally I had some time to catch up with all the VMware Explore US 2022 news. For vSAN 8 the biggest thing has been that there will be a new, single tier architecture called the Express Storage Architecture (ESA). The Orginal Storage Architecture (OSA, vSAN as we know it) will remain! I have put together …

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HCI Tools vSAN vSphere VxRail

vSphere Diagnostic Tool (vdt)

The occasion was anything but desirable but this week I had the pleasure to work with a very skilled VMware Support guy to fix a broken vCenter ELM replication at a customer’s site. In this session I really learned a lot. But what stood out the most was this pretty new VMware Fling: https://flings.vmware.com/vsphere-diagnostic-tool vSphere …

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HCI Security vSAN vSphere VxRail

VxRail update guide

Last week a customer asked me to write a guide he can use to update his VxRail clusters on his own in the future. Because I think this guide could also be useful for others out there I decided to share a more or less generalized version on my blog. // important notes This guide …

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HCI vSAN VxRail

vSAN cluster shutdown & startup

Since the vSphere/vSAN version 7 Update 3 has been withdrawn and is about to be re-released shortly (but hopefully not installed in production very soon!), I had to use the “traditional” way to manually shutdown and startup two vSAN clusters of a customer due to power maintenance using the VMware procedure: Manually Shut Down and …

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