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Askar Kopbayev
Askar Kopbayev
Askar Kopbayev is a Senior Consultant @VMware, vExpert 2012, 2013, 2015, VCP, VCAP-DCA, CCNP, MCSE
Askar Kopbayev

Hybrid Cloud Extension – Part 2

If you ever worked with vSphere, you definitely used at least one of those. However, in HCX they are used with Secure Proxy. All migration traffic is proxied via HCX WAN Interconnect appliance (WAN-IX). Deployed WAN-IX simulates new ESXi host under local vCenter. You can actually see it in the Web Client inventory. From the point of view of vCenter and other ESXi host the WAN-IX is just another regular host.

Askar Kopbayev

Hybrid Cloud Extension – Part 1

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) is probably one of the most underestimated VMware products. Even amongst virtualization experts, very few people know what it is, and what value it can bring to the companies. The VMware HCX is a platform that erases borders between on-prem and cloud datacenters. It delivers app mobility and creates infrastructure hybridity across vSphere 5.0 and newer versions.

Askar Kopbayev

3 Generations of My Homelabs

Sooner or later every single IT guy comes to the idea of having some lab. There are a million reasons why you would need a lab: learning new technologies, improving skills, trying crazy ideas you would never dare to try in the production network, you name it. Even though it is a work-related activity for most home labbers this is just another hobby for many of us.  That’s why people spend so many hours of their personal time building the homelab, investing significant funds into new hardware, thoroughly planning its setup, looking for a help in online communities or sharing their experience to help others. There is a whole universe of home labbers and I am happy to be part of this community. In this post, I would like to share my experience with 3 generations of home labs I have had so far and the thoughts about next generation.

Askar Kopbayev

Virtual workload migration with VMware

It is quite surprising how many companies migrate virtual workload nowadays. There could be different reasons – expiring contract with the service provider, move to the new office, consolidation of resources to minimize Capex and Opex, but in every case, companies need efficient and flexible V2V migration solution. Very often people think of migration in terms of moving data from one place to another. However, migration is much more than that. For instance, you would probably want VMs to keep the same IP addresses after the migration. Which means you need to consider stretching VLANs between the source and target locations in case you cannot migrate all VMs in particular subnet in one go. You must plan a network cutover too.

Askar Kopbayev

vSphere 6.5: HA & DRS improvements. Part 2

In Part II we will review the remaining improvements in vSphere Availability and Resource Management brought by vSphere 6.5.

Askar Kopbayev

vSphere 6.5: HA & DRS improvements. Part I

A number of improvements that have been introduced in vSphere HA and DRS in the last several years are impressive. vSphere 6.5 continues this tradition by bringing new features into HA Admission Control, by adding flexibility with HA Orchestrated Restart and by enabling DRS to make more intelligent balancing. I will be trying a new format today. First, I will be explaining the challenges you might have had in previous vSphere releases and then I will show you how the new vSphere 6.5 HA & DRS features address those challenges.

Askar Kopbayev

vCenter Server High Availability Review – Part 2

In this second part of VCHA review I will be covering some ‘gotchas’ and configuration steps that are not covered in the VMware availability guide We will also go through all steps of Advanced Configuration.

Askar Kopbayev

vCenter Server High Availability Review – Part 1

High Availability for vCenter Server has never been as important as today when there are so many products dependant on vCenter, e.g. VMware NSX, vSAN, Horizon View, etc. VMware tried different approaches to bring HA to the vCenter.

Askar Kopbayev

Back to basics – RAID types

If you ever worked in IT, you have heard the acronym RAID.  RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent (some call it Inexpensive) Disks. So, it basically refers to a group of disk logically presented as one or more volumes to the external system – a server, for instance. The main two reasons to have RAID are Performance and Redundancy.  With RAID, you can minimize the access time and increase the throughput of data. RAID also allows one or more disks in the array to fail without losing any data.

Askar Kopbayev

The latest updates in vSphere 6.5 and VSAN 6.5

This day has come – vSphere 6.5 has been just announced. As many of you I have been waiting for the presentation of new vSphere during VMworld event in the USA, but I guess VMware preferred to use vSphere 6.5 as a treat for those who were in doubt whether to attend VMworld Europe or not after all VMworld US were made available online to everyone; or perhaps VMware hasn’t decided what features should be included into the GA release. In this post, I will try to cover all new features of vSphere 6.5 and VSAN 6.5, but if I missed something feel free to let me know by leaving a comment. To be honest, there is so much to talk about and some of the new features require separate posts to be explained properly. Therefore, please don’t expect detailed review of the every single feature.. This is more ‘What’s new in vSphere 6.5 and VSAN 6.5’ overview, but in the future posts I will be talking about some of the most interesting improvements and enhancements in detail.