Configuring webhook notifications in VMware Data Services Manager v1.5

In my most recent post, we looked at how to send email alerts via SMTP from VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) v1.5. In this post, we will look at how to send alert notifications using a different method, webhooks. For the purposes of this post, we will examine the steps involved in sending webhook notifications to a slack channel. However, VMware Data Services Manager v1.5 also supports the option to configure webhook notifications to ServiceNow as well as custom webhook configurations for other applications. We will begin this post by first creating a slack application, enabling the web hook features…

Configuring SMTP and Email Notifications in VMware Data Services Manager v1.5

Another nice feature of VMware Data Services Manager to help administrators to manage and monitor their fleet of databases is integration with SMTP, the Simple Mail Transport Protocol. This feature allows database owners to receive email notifications when there is an operational issue or failure with their database. In this post, I’ll show you the very simple configuration steps to enable SMTP notifications. I will also show you how to verify that this functionality is behaving as expected by introducing a few failure scenarios to some newly created and existing databases. We are using VMware DSM v1.5 in this post.…

Securing PostgreSQL client connections in VMware Data Services Manager v1.5 using TLS

I had an interesting question recently about how best to secure client access to databases that are provisioned via VMware Data Services Manager (DSM). The good news is that we can achieve secure client connections in a single step, directly from the DSM Provider UI. Simply navigate to the database view, and in the Details page, there is a Security section. In the Actions drop-down from this page, we can very simply enable “Client TLS”. What this means is that clients will no longer be able to connect to the database with SSL. Only SSL connections will be allowed. Below…

PostgreSQL Extensions in VMware Data Services Manager v1.5

I had an interesting query earlier this week in relation to PostgreSQL Extensions in VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) v1.5. We do not give out superuser (postgres user) privileges when creating databases via DSM, although it is still possible to find those credentials and access the database with those privileges if necessary. Instead, we focus on the default user that we create when we deploy a database, a user that we have named ‘dbaas’. The query was how should extensions be added to PostgreSQL if ‘dbaas’ is not a superuser? The answer lies in our DSM documentation where we describe…

VMware Data Services Manager (present and futures) at VMware Explore 2023

With VMware Explore 2023 fast approaching, I thought it might be a good idea to give you some advanced notice about some of the VMware Data Services Manager activities that you will find at The Venetian in Las Vegas. First and foremost, I wanted to give a shout out to VMware Fellow, Christos Karamonolis. Christos is going to share VMware’s vision & strategy for data management. For years (decades?), VMware has been providing the underlying storage infrastructure for storing your bits, bytes and files. Think about how long VMFS has been available as a filesystem for your virtual infrastructure storage…

Kubernetes for vSphere Admins – part of the June 2023 VMware User Group Global Virtual Event series

This session was selected by the VMware User Group (VMUG) for their Global Virtual Event which was held on June 27, 2023. As part of the session, some of the fundamentals of Kubernetes (K8s) are discussed. The talk then moves onto areas where vSphere Administrators can begin to onboard with Kubernetes, particularly when K8s control plane and worker nodes are deployed as a set of virtual machines on top of vSphere infrastructure. The two areas which are discussed in significant detail are the external Load Balancers and the vSphere CSI driver. The talk examines the options for different Load Balancers…

VMware Data Services Manager Hands On Lab now available

A very short post to let you all know about a new VMware Hands On Lab (HoL). This HoL is focused on getting started with VMware Data Services Manager (DSM). Many readers will have seen the multiple posts that I have been sharing since the beginning of this year on VMware DSM. Now you can get some “hands-on” with the product through the lab. We believe that one of the main use cases for VMware DSM is the self-service of database instances, notably for developers who quickly need to spin up a database instance as part of their testing process.…