October, 2011 | 2vcps and a Truck

A lot of questions lately about vSphere Clusters across distance. I really need to learn for myself so I collected some good links.

Make sure you understand what “Only Non-uniform host access configuration is supported” means. Someone correct me if I have this wrong but your device that enables the distributed virtual storage needs to be sure that hosts in site A are writing to their preferred volumes in site A and vice versa in Site B. Probably way over simplifying it.

LINKS

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2007545

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2011/10/new-vmware-hcl-category-vsphere-metro-stretched-cluster.html

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/10/07/vsphere-metro-storage-cluster-solutions-what-is-supported-and-what-not/

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/10/05/vsphere-5-0-ha-and-metro-stretched-cluster-solutions/

Big thanks to Scott Lowe for clearing the details on this topic.

A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at a the TechX conference in Baton Rouge. I wanted to share what I presented with regards to running VMware View 5 with a VNXe. The solution is meant for those shops where the IT team is one. That one person must do everything.

Using some of the VMware wizards included in the VNXe along with pools optimized for VMware View replicas and linked clones. I was able to show a demo adding storage and 50 desktops and all be finished and ready to use before the presentation time was up. Pretty easy. With the VNXe now supporting EFD, I would expect even better performance.

If you have trouble displaying the embedded Sliderocket Presentation look here.
VMware View and VNXe

Credit to the original authors of the View on VNXe 3300 Reference Architecture. I drew my inspiration for running the tests and Demos on View 5 and vSphere 5 from this paper.