Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

VMware provides its clients with multiple useful features and tools, one of them being vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA). It is a preconfigured Linux virtual machine, designed specifically for the running VMware vCenter Server. Admittedly, that makes your life a lot easier, which is why you would not want to lose a connection to a virtual machine. However, that is what happens when your VMware hypervisor is configured with a Distributed Switch (dvSwitch).

A botnet, DDOS attacks, phishing scam are entering the real world with the fast path, carrying a real threat to your data. How to make yourself secure? Azure Bastion is one way to protect your strategic and critical assets from cyber risks. It allows you to have private and fully managed RDP and SSH access to your Azure Virtual Machines (VMs). How to deploy it in your environment? Read the article by Nicolas Prigent, a System Engineer, to find out how to create an Azure Bastion host at the following link

In not so good old times of internet security being only at preliminary stages, the only protection measures available were wild viral applications all over the internet, such as Sandboxie. It is an app, designed to instantly close and delete all the suspicious content after finishing operations. Naturally, it was only a matter of time until someone has utilized it, which came to be Microsoft.

VMware released its new vSphere 6.7 U2 update where vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) has acquired the capability to converge external Platform Service Controller (PSC) into embedded. In addition, it’s now possible to decommission external PSC virtual appliances via the UI instead of CLI. Embedded PSC is right up your alley! It not only simplifies the overall architecture but also facilitates environment patching, upgrading, and management.

Admittedly, the way of adjusting a novel piece of technology usually takes a few steps to make. The deployment and configuration of Windows Virtual Desktop are finished, but what to do next? First things first, you have to know the basics, in this case – deploying applications.

Application virtualization services, despite a lot of benefits, are not always able to rival SaaS platforms. Or at least, it used to be the case before the public preview of Windows Virtual Desktop. The latter is a desktop and app virtualization service employing simplified management, multi-session Windows 10, Office 365 ProPlus optimization, and RDS environments support. Learn how to utilize this novelty in a few clicks!

In my previous article, I measured SQL Server Basic Availability Groups (BAG) performance. This, as it comes from the name, addresses SQL Cluster Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) performance. I expect SQL Server FCI to exhibit two times higher performance than BAG. Before I start, I’d like to tell you one important thing about this measurement. SQL Server FCI database resides on a StarWind virtual device. Why did I choose StarWind? Because I got their NFR license some time ago and decided to give this software-defined storage solution a shot. Let’s just hope that it won’t limit SQL Server FCI performance.

Veeam announced the next update of its backup app – Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5u4. It has an opportunity to create a Scale-Out Backup Repository (SOBR) with local and cloud extents. And one more benefit: SOBR can include two tiers. It’s not fiction. Create a performance tier and capacity tier such as a storage account in Microsoft Azure with SOBR!

Whether you’re new to the idea of a CI/CD pipeline or have tried this development practice before and are simply looking for ways to optimize the process, this article is for you.