LAB2PROD
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Shank Mohan is a Senior Consultant working in the Professional Services Organisation (PSO) at VMware. He spends too much time in his home lab and has created a platform to share what he's learned, collaborate on new ideas, and help troubleshoot PITA problems in virtual infrastructure and software-defined networks.
LAB2PROD
1M ago
Why You Shouldn’t Upgrade VMware NSX Manually The Issue?
It is important to understand the impacts of manually upgrading products in a VMware Cloud Foundation environment. In this article, VMware NSX was previously upgraded to a ‘non-VCF’ version, and caused lifecycle issues for the entire domain.
Unless you are upgrading in a supported manner, i.e. the async patch tool, then the official guidance is simple, do not upgrade any products outside of SDDC Manager. The screenshots below are what you will see if the versions do not match what is in the BOM and database on SDDC Manager. This is a NSX ..read more
LAB2PROD
1M ago
SDDC Manager: Unable To Configure Security Global Config The Issue?
There are 6 steps to upgrade a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) management domain:
SDDC Manager and VMware Cloud Foundation services.
VMware Cloud Foundation config drift.
vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, vRealize Suite products, and Workspace ONE Access.
NSX.
vCenter Server.
If you have stretched clusters in your environment, upgrade the vSAN witness host.
VxRail Manager and ESXi
Reference: VMware Cloud Foundation Upgrade Process
The issue highlighted in this post occurs as part of step ..read more
LAB2PROD
1M ago
SDDC Manager: Unable To Configure Security Global Config The Issue?
There are 6 steps to upgrade a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) management domain:
SDDC Manager and VMware Cloud Foundation services.
VMware Cloud Foundation config drift.
vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, vRealize Suite products, and Workspace ONE Access.
NSX.
vCenter Server.
If you have stretched clusters in your environment, upgrade the vSAN witness host.
VxRail Manager and ESXi
Reference: VMware Cloud Foundation Upgrade Process
The issue highlighted in this post occurs as part of step ..read more
LAB2PROD
2M ago
Environment Upgrade Blocked The Issue?
Upgrading VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.5.1 to VCF 5 results in a host failure or host error state, which effectively roadblocks completion of the upgrade, during the host upgrade phase. If you are concerned that you may be facing this issue, refer to the image below, if you see this message then continue reading.
The video below is a demonstration of the upgrade process.
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Elevate Your Cloud: Upgrade from VMware Cloud Foundation...
Further Diagnosing The Domain Failed State
Navigate to inventory > hosts &g ..read more
LAB2PROD
2M ago
Tunnel Endpoints (TEPs) are a fundamental construct in VMware NSX; they are mandatory if overlay networking is being designed and deployed. This article focuses on VMware NSX TEP HA (TEP High Availability for Host Transport Nodes) that was released with VMware NSX 4.1. An overview of TEPs and their importance will be covered prior to dissecting this new feature.
Table of Contents
What are Tunnel Endpoints?
What is the significance of a TEP?
TEP Failure Behavior Before VMware NSX 4.1
Added TEP High Availability in VMware NSX 4.1
Configuring MultiTEP High Availability
Creating a VTEP HA Host ..read more
LAB2PROD
2M ago
What is VMware NSX multi-tenancy? Historically multi-tenancy in VMware NSX was a Tier-0 gateway, otherwise known as the provider router, with one or many child Tier-1 gateways. Each Tier-1 gateway is created with a specific use-case; it could be for different customers, different environments, etc, the end goal is to provide tenancy segmentation.
Multi-tenancy was first introduced in VMware NSX 4.0.1.1, however, was driven via API. This article will focus on multi-tenancy in VMware NSX 4.1 which now allows users to have logical tenancy separation in the UI as well as API. This is fundamentally ..read more
LAB2PROD
2M ago
Why is knowing the different VMware NSX Edge Failure Scenarios Important?
As more data centres adopt VMware NSX and embrace it’s powerful overlay routing functionality, very few take the time to truly understand the datapath and the different VMware NSX Edge Failure Scenarios.
This article will equip readers with the ability to predetermine what a north-south failure would look like, understanding this behavior is useful when performing failover testing or in real-world failure scenarios.
I cover the data plane, tunnel endpoints (TEPs), logical routing, and routing with the physical fabric in ..read more
LAB2PROD
2M ago
A closer look at the plugin and its caveats
The VMware NSX vCenter plugin was first released with VMware NSX 3.2. The plugin makes it substantially easier to adopt and deploy VMware NSX for a vCenter administrator. There are some caveats to deploying NSX this way, regardless of which mode you chose to deploy; Security Only or Virtual Networking.
The deployment modes, workflow and requirements have been covered in an earlier video (available below). In this article, we focus on demonstrating the caveats of each deployment mode, and supporting administrators to make an informed decision on which ..read more
LAB2PROD
2M ago
Architecture and Hardware Refresh
I get asked about my homelab quite a bit, so this post details the recent architecture and hardware changes to my homelab. As with most labs, this one is an ever-changing beast… not to mention great way to spend that hard earned cash! In this revision you will see a major shift in the way VCF, NSX, SD-WAN, AWS is used.
Table of Contents
Architecture and Hardware Refresh
Lab Architecture
Bill of Materials
VCF Region 1
VCF Region 2
Networking
Shared Storage
Virtual Environment
Backup Strategy
Lab Architecture
The diagram below is a representation of the ..read more
LAB2PROD
2M ago
NSX-T Tier-1 Gateways, Failure Domains, Standby Relocation, and Pre-emption.
A few weeks ago I was asked by a client if Standby Relocation worked in conjunction with Failure Domains to enable ‘smart’ Tier-1 Service Router placement. This post will attempt to explain the behaviour in various scenarios, including:
Tier-1 Active SR failure with Standby Relocation disabled
Tier-1 Active SR failure with Standby Relocation enabled
Tier-1 Active SR failure with Standby Relocation and Pre-emption enabled
This post will first provide an explanation of each of these features to explain when and why th ..read more