ThinkAgile VX Deployer

Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Deployer

When you do work that feels good, time flies. LinkedIn reminded me that I joined Lenovo 2 years ago, but I still have a vivid memory of my first day at Lenovo, in the middle of the pandemic: get in the office, spend 20 minutes to get the IT equipment, and then rush home. I realized I wrote nothing on my blog about my work at Lenovo, so I’ll correct this quickly.

In the middle of the COVID-19 crisis priorities changed, for me like for a lot of other people. I decided that 20 years spent in IT operations are enough. During my search for other opportunities, I met the people from Lenovo and I liked their involvement in the community, given my implication in the VMUG community I felt we are sharing similar vision. So here I am jumping in a different boat, software development. I was lucky enough to join a new initiative in Lenovo and help developing a product from scratch, a tool to automate installation and configuration of a vSAN cluster.

What is ThinkAgile VX Deployer?

ThinkAgile VX Deployer is a GUI-based wizard that guides a VMware administrator through the deployment of vSAN clusters on top of Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Integrated Systems. We designed the Deployer to be as simple to use as possible. You just install the VX servers in rack, and then fire the VX Deployer. You don’t need to configure out-of-band interfaces, you don’t need to power on the servers, you just need the right amount of network connections.

Read More
VMworld 2020

VMworld 2020 – Which Sessions to Attend?

VMworld 2020 is just around the corner. In this COVID-19 world everything moved online and so does VMworld. Make sure to register to VMworld 2020 and reserve in your calendars the period 29th September to 1st October.

This year, VMware offers two types of access to VMworld:

  • General Pass – includes access to 500+ on-demand VMworld sessions – free of charge
  • Premier Pass – everything General Pass has plus access to roundtables, limited capacity sessions, birds of a feather (informal discussions), hand-on-labs, 1:1 expert consultations  – priced at $299

Few days ago, VMware made available the scheduler, so I will base this article on my selection of VMworld sessions, in no particular order. I have a free General Pass, so I will not touch anything reserved to Premier Pass. 14 sessions spread across 3 days, covering topics as private and public cloud, networking and security, containers, hyper-converged infrastructure, and career.

Read More
vCenter Server 7.0.0a

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.0a

VMware released a new vCenter Server version: 7.0.0a, 7.0.0.10300, build 16189094. In this article I cover the resolved issues and I show how easy is to update from the previous version of vCenter Server 7.0.0 to the latest 7.0.0a. I also include few images with the new update notification features from vSphere Client.

In case you are looking for an upgrade demonstration from vCenter Server 6.7 to vCenter Server 7.0.0, you can check my other article: How to Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance from 6.7 to 7.0 – Stage 1.

vCenter Server 7.0.0a – Resolved Issues

This release of vCenter Server 7.0.0a delivers the following patch:

  • Patch for VMware vCenter Server Appliance 7.0.0a (VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-7.0.0.10300-16189094-patch-FP.iso)

The patch resolves a vSAN issue: vSphere Lifecycle Manager and vSAN File Services cannot be simultaneously enabled on a vSAN cluster. With vCenter Server 7.0.0a you can enable both vSAN File Services and vSphere Lifecycle Manager at the same time on a cluster.

Upgrade from vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3g to vCenter Server 7.0.0a is not supported. Upgrade is supported though from older versions of vCenter Server 6.7. You can check KB67077 for the upgrade matrix.

Read More