Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

VMware vSphere 6.5 is the latest version of the enterprise server virtual platform from VMware, but the new beta it’s already there for testers. Actually the next version it’s (in the beta). If you are building a new infrastructure from scratch the latest stable version is probably the best choices (for most cases); but what about if you have an old environment and you plan to upgrade it?

So we all want our IT infrastructure to be available at hand and manage it from any remote location. Nowadays, it’s nothing special, it’s just a “must-have”. For real, the days of managing your IT environment only from a directly connected device are long gone. IT administrators need flexibility and the ability to access their infrastructure 24/7 no matter where they are. Installing dedicated software every time you need to make some minor changes or just to monitor your environment’s stats is also a no go. Moreover, such software may not be supported on mobile devices.

After seeing on how to start with Intune in the new Azure Portal, we will see how to enroll devices (iOS, Android & Windows 10) and how to deploy applications on them.

VMware vCenter server appliance is evolving with every major release of VMware vSphere Suite. The product, which manages the whole vSphere infrastructure, can be either installed on a Windows server or deployed as pre-configured virtual appliance called vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). Over several VCSA releases, VMware managed to make this product equal to the Windows-based one, and it pushes the development even further so now the Linux based product has more features than the vCenter server installed on Windows. However, many VMware admins are also Microsoft guys and like the graphical user interface to work with. That’s why today we’ll have a look at 5 Tips to manage this appliance. We won’t go into the configuration steps within this post as this has been documented many times.

Throughout the last month, VMware has released two important updates for virtual infrastructure management server – VMware vCenter 6.5 Update 1d and 1e. Both updates have significantly improved the functionality of the vCenter management server, despite it’s just one more letter added to Update 1.

With the new Azure portal launched some months ago now, Microsoft is trying to move all management console in this new portal, and it’s the case with Microsoft Intune. To manage your Intune subscription now, you need to pass through the Azure Portal. To remember, Intune is a service to manage the mobility of your IT environment (mobile phone, laptop, etc.). I’ll now explain to you how to start with this new interface.

During its lifetime, any system reaches a point when it needs to be upgraded, either in terms of hardware or software. Today, I will talk about such changes, in particular, about upgrading Windows Failover Cluster nodes from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016 with no production interruption. Thanks to Microsoft, we do have a Cluster Rolling Upgrade procedure at our fingertips, and I am going to get through it and confirm it works for virtualized disks as cluster shared volumes in Windows Failover Cluster. This procedure assumes rebuilding nodes with clean OS deployment one by one, while the production keeps running from the other cluster node.

Nowadays, many VMware vSphere administrators manage their virtual infrastructures with VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 (vCSA). This solution currently is a full-fledged alternative to the VMware vCenter for Windows which becomes a thing of the past. For ones who use vCSA not that long, this post provides several procedures which simplify solutions’ daily use. Let’s have a look at how they may come in handy.

Nowadays, every company is doing its best to protect its data, which is pretty much its most valuable asset. As you know, data is vulnerable to unauthorized access and that’s when Microsoft BitLocker saves the day. BitLocker is the encryption technology from Microsoft, which makes possible to encrypt the Logical Volume on the transparent blade-based level (not physical disk). In this article, we will see how to encrypt Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) using Microsoft BitLocker to protect your data against unauthorized access.