Author: Danilo

vCenter Reduced Downtime Upgrade shows how to perform a vCenter Server upgrade with reduced downtime. First and foremost, what is the Reduced Downtime Upgrade? Reduced downtime upgrade (RDU) is a migration-based approach to upgrade vCenter Server between major and minor versions that reduces downtime to less than 5 minutes under ideal network, CPU, memory, and storage conditions. The reduced downtime upgrade process uses a migration-based approach. This approach deploys a new vCenter Server Appliance, and the current vCenter data and configuration are copied. The reduced downtime upgrade does not replace the current vCenter Server upgrade process through the GUI installer. During the reduced…

How can I use NAT on NSX-T? In this article, we’ll show you an example of how to use NAT on NSX-T. First and foremost, what is NAT? NAT is an acronym for Network Address Translation and acts as a translator of IP addresses – an example of NAT usage in providing Internet access to internal devices. In this scenario, we have an internal network using non-routable IP addresses on the Internet. We have a router on the network’s edge with one or more public IP addresses. So, when someone needs to access the Internet internally, the router applies NAT,…

Recover ESXi Host Network shows all the necessary steps to recover an ESXi management network when connected to a vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS). First things first: Describing the Scenario So, in this example, we have a four-node vSAN cluster, and the first ESXi host, for some reason (wrong configuration such as VLAN tagging, etc), is with “not responding” status, as we can see: All nodes are using a vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS), and all VMkernels adapters communicate through Port Groups attached to this VDS: Each ESXi host has four physical adapters: Each Port group uses two physical adapters: one Active…

Changing the Hostname on a Production vCenter Server shows all the steps I have used to change the vCenter Server hostname. Disclaimer: All steps shown here were performed in a lab environment. Before applying them to your environment, make sure to understand everything and, if possible, replicate them in a lab or test environment. We’ll not be responsible for any downtime caused to your environment due to unplanned and untested actions! During this process, the vCenter Server will be unavailable for some minutes (15 – 20 minutes in my test because all vCenter Server services will be restarted). So, make…

An Introduction to PowerFlex REST API Operations shows how to start using the powerful API of the PowerFlex solution. We have written some PowerFlex articles. Click here to see them all!In this article, I will focus only on PowerFlex API Operations. To learn more about PowerFlex, first, check out our other PowerFlex articles. We are using PowerFlex version 4.5.2. So, our commands shown here were tested on this version!We use the “curl” application to execute each API call. First and foremost, what is an API? An API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of rules and protocols that allows different software applications…

How to Switch the MDM Cluster Mode shows how to switch from a 3_node PowerFlex MDM cluster to a 5_node MDM cluster. We are running the PowerFlex 4.5.2! Currently, our MDM cluster has three nodes, as we can see below: Our goal here is to add two more nodes: pfmp-sds-04 and pfmp-sds-05. Both nodes (pfmp-sds-04 and pfmp-sds-05) already have the necessary rpm packages installed: Adding Standby MDM Nodes Since our MDM cluster is a three-node cluster (3_node), we need to add both additional MDM nodes first. The following command will add the node “pfmp-sds-04” with the “manager” role. The node…