Finding VMDK path from PV VolumeHandle

I’ve been looking at ways in which we could query the mappings of objects between the Kubernetes layer and the vSphere layer. One thing that I really wanted to figure out is if I have the VolumeHandle from the Persistent Volume in Kubernetes, could I easily find the datastore and path using PowerCLI. It looks like I can. Let’s begin with a look at the Persistent Volume or PV  for short. Note that this is a Kubernetes cluster that is using the new vSphere CSI driver. 

Site Recovery Manager support for vVols – Tech Preview from VMworld 2019

Regular readers will be aware that I have been spending a lot of my time on Cloud Native Storage topics these days, whether it is bubbling up how Kubernetes clusters are consuming vSphere storage through our new CNS feature in vSphere 6.7U3, or using Velero to do lots of things like backups/restores/application mobility. However something I have been passionate about for quite a number of years now is our Virtual Volumes (vVols) feature. And while it has been rather quiet over the past couple of years, I was thrilled to see us deliver a tech preview for supporting Site Recovery…

Moving a Stateful App from VCP to CSI based Kubernetes cluster using Velero

Since the release of the vSphere CSI driver in vSphere 6.7U3, I have had a number of requests about how we plan to migrate applications between Kubernetes clusters that are using the original in-tree vSphere Cloud Provider (VCP) and Kubernetes clusters that are built with the new vSphere CSI driver. All I can say at this point in time is that we are looking at ways to seamlessly achieve this at some point in the future, and that the Kubernetes community has a migration design in the works to move from in-tree providers to the new CSI driver as well.…

Recording of my VMUG France presentation now available

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at the French VMware User Group (VMUG) meeting in Paris. The local VMUG team did an awesome job with respect to the logistics, and even had someone on-site to record all of the sessions. The team just sent me the recording of my presentation, which I am delighted to be able to share with you. If you’re interested in learning more about vSAN 6.7U3, Kubernetes and Cloud Native Storage, this recording should help. And don’t worry – only the first few sentences are in my very terrible French 🙂 Encore merci équipe…

See you at VMworld 2019 (Barcelona)

Hola! It is only a month or so to go until VMworld 2019 arrives back in Europe. Yet again, we are back in Barcelona for what promises to be a great event. I missed VMworld in San Francisco this year – too many things happening on the home front. So I’m really looking forward to getting down to Spain in early November and meeting up with everyone again. I am involved in 2 sessions in Barcelona. One of the sessions is the HCIBU Spotlight Session, HCI3551KE. I am delivering this with our SVP and GM of the Hyper-converged Infrastructure Business…

vSAN 6.7 U3 New Advanced Options

Today’s blog post highlights two new Advanced Option in vSAN 6.7 U3. The first of these is Large Cluster Support. Today, in vSAN 6.7 U3, we are now able to configure support for large vSAN clusters (i.e. clusters that are over 32 nodes in size) with a single Advanced Option. In the past, you would have needed to go to each host in the cluster and make various advanced setting changes on a host by host basis such as TcpipHeapMax. Being able to set a single cluster wide Advanced Option does simplify things very much. Below is a screenshot taken…

Two short video demos – CNS and Velero 1.1

I put together a few short (7 – 8 minute) videos to show off some new functionality that we’ve recently added in vSphere 6.7U3, as well as our new Velero v1.1 in action. The first video is on CNS, the VMware Cloud Native Storage feature which we included in vSphere 6.7U3. This demonstration involves the deployment of a Cassandra database on Kubernetes, which incidentally uses the new CSI (Container Storage Interface) driver for persistent volumes. Once the application is deployed, we can see the characteristics of the volumes bubbled up in vSphere. We also see how using CNS, we can…