Author: Danilo

Checking thick-provisioned disks with PowerCLI in a vSAN cluster is a practical way to identify virtual disks that are using a thick provisioning method. This article shows how to use VMware PowerCLI commands to find these disks in a vSAN environment. Before checking the disks, it is important to understand the difference between thin-provisioned and thick-provisioned virtual disks. A thin-provisioned disk consumes physical storage space as data is written, while a thick-provisioned disk reserves the configured capacity during disk creation. There are two types of thick-provisioned disks in VMware environments: Lazy Zeroed and Eager Zeroed. The main difference is when…

vSphere vMotion is a VMware technology that allows administrators to migrate a powered-on Virtual Machine (VM) from one ESXi host to another without interrupting its operation. This article explains how vSphere vMotion works, its requirements, and the main concepts involved in a VM migration process. About VM Migration Migration means moving a Virtual Machine (VM) from one ESXi host, datastore, or vCenter Server instance to another ESXi host, datastore, or vCenter Server instance. In this context, a migration can be “cold” or “hot”: For every requested migration, the vCenter Server instance performs compatibility checks before migrating suspended or powered-on VMs…

Getting the SSH RSA Key Fingerprint and SSL Thumbprint of an ESXi host is an important preparation step for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) deployments. These values are required during the management domain bring-up process to establish trusted communication between components. In this article, we will explain how to collect both the SSH RSA Key Fingerprint and SSL Thumbprint from ESXi hosts using command-line tools such as ssh-keyscan, ssh-keygen, and OpenSSL. These values can then be added to the Cloud Builder Deployment Parameter Workbook before starting the VCF bring-up process. What is the SSH RSA Key Fingerprint? It is like a…

The VMware Cloud Builder deployment process is the first step to deploy a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) environment. VMware Cloud Builder automates the creation of the management domain and prepares the foundation required for the SDDC Manager deployment. In this article, we will explore the VMware Cloud Builder deployment steps, including downloading the required files, deploying the Cloud Builder virtual appliance, configuring the necessary settings, and accessing the Cloud Builder interface to start the bring-up process. Before starting the deployment, it is essential to carefully prepare the Deployment Parameter Workbook file. This spreadsheet contains the configuration details required by VMware…

VMware Cloud Foundation is the next-generation VMware cloud platform for traditional and modern applications. It is based on a proven and comprehensive software-defined stack, including VMware vSphere (ESXi + vCenter), VMware vSAN, VMware NSX, VMware vSphere with Tanzu, and the VMware Aria Suite. With this software-based stack, VMware Cloud Foundation provides a complete service for an entire data center with computing, storage, network, container, and cloud management. VMware Cloud Foundation Components VMware Cloud Builder: This component is responsible for creating the VMware Cloud Foundation management domain. This virtual machine (VM) is deployed from an OVA file from Broadcom. It is…

This article explains how to disable a BGP peer administratively on VMware NSX. Disabling a BGP peer can be useful during troubleshooting activities, maintenance windows, or when you need to temporarily stop the BGP relationship between the Tier-0 gateway and an upstream neighbor. Before making any changes, it is important to validate the current BGP connectivity status. The BGP neighbor state allows us to confirm whether the communication between the NSX Edge Node and the remote BGP peer is established and exchanging routing information correctly. Disabling a BGP peer to stop the neighborhood between them can be helpful or necessary…