vSAN 6.6 Setup Demo

Building a POC vSAN Lab

Building a vSAN cluster from scratch has never been easier. Recently I had the opportunity to get my hands on 3 fine Lenovo x3650 M5 servers with local SAS drives and flash.

Specs

Lenovo x3650 M5, Dual Xeon Processor E5-2640 v4
8x 16GB TruDDR4 Memory (2Rx4, 1.2V)
8x 1.2TB 10K 12Gbps SAS 2.5in G3HSHDD
2x 300GB 10K 12Gbps SAS 2.5in G3HSHDD
2x 400GB 12G SAS 2.5in MLC G3HS SSD
ServeRAID M5210 SAS/SATA Controller
Lenovo ServeRAID M5200 2GB Flash/RAID5
3x Broadcom NetXtreme 2x10GbE BaseAdap

Make sure everythin is on the VMware vSAN HCL.

ESXi 6.5.0d Build 5310538
vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.0e Build 5705665

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How to leverage Veeam-Agent to protect physical servers from update failures

In a virtualized world, physical servers have become quite rare. However, some systems like hypervisors or storage-virtualizers need to be physical for obvious reasons.
If you have to upgrade or patch these systems, you’ll keep your fingers crossed and hope they will come up fully functional after the upgrade. You may wish to have a convenient backup or snapshot, like you’re used to in the virtualized world.

Veeam Agent

Actually there is already a solution for the Problem: Veeam Agent for Windows (aka “The Agent formerly known as Veeam-Endpoint”, or TAFKAV).  😉

This software does a very good job since it was released in April 2015. I’ve installed it on countless customers workstations so far. It protects my homelab, my notebook and also some difficult to replace installations on customer sites. The ability to use an existing Veeam-Backup repository makes it even more useful in an enterprise environment.

Veeam Agent 2.0 comes in three flavours: The free version, the Workstation version and the Server version. Workstation offers a similar set of features as the free version, but offers 24/7 support and centralized management. The server version offers application consistent backups including log-truncation. Continue reading “How to leverage Veeam-Agent to protect physical servers from update failures”

Nextcloud plugin for Outlook

Sometimes you may wish to send attachments, that are far too big for an email. Of course you can upload the file to your cloudserver beforehand, then share the link and copy/paste that link into your email. Possible, but cumbersome.

If your private cloud is Nextcloud, then there’s good news for you. Nextcloud developers released an Outlook-plugin that ist very useful and shortens the process. Just download the free plugin (lastet version). Choose x64 or x86 setup file according to your Office version. Continue reading “Nextcloud plugin for Outlook”

Pockethernet hands on

The Swiss Army knife of network troubleshooting

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to follow a network cable through a mesh (or should I say mess?) of hundreds of other cables, just to find out which switchport it is connected to? If your answer is no, please tell me your secret! 🙂

Cool tool

Last week I got a packet with a handy new tool inside. It’s called Pockethernet. Once started as a crowdfunding project, it is now a mature, full featured network analyzer that easily fits into one hand or the pocket of your shirt.

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