DSM 9.0.1 – New RBAC Features

The most visible feature in Data Services Manager (DSM) 9.0.1 is the appearance of some additional new objects in the navigation menu on the left hand side of the DSM UI. These are Namespaces and Data Services Policy. Customers who have already looked at VCF Automation, particularly as it integrates with DSM, may have some familiarity with these. Their purpose in DSM 9.0.1 is to align with RBAC features that are already in VCF Automation, specifically around multi-tenancy controls. Through the use of Namespaces and Data Service Policies in DSM 9.0.1, a DSM admin can now control which DSM users…

Data Services Manager 9.0.1 Announced

It gives me great pleasure to announce the availability of VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) version 9.0.1. Over the coming weeks I will be deep-diving into many of these new features, but for now I want to provide you all with a brief overview of the capabilities and enhancements that you can find in this release. Automated Active Directory integration for MS SQL Server We continue to enhance our MS SQL Server integration. Although the data service is still in tech preview in DSM 9.0.1, a significant enhancement in this release is the ability to specify a privileged Active Directory…

Using ldap2pg to integrate between AD Groups and Postgres Roles

On a recent customer call regarding Postgres instances and databases provisioned by Data Services Manager (DSM), there was a question regarding Active Directory / LDAP integration. Specifically, there was a question on how to automatically provide an Active Directory / LDAP group access to a Postgres database. Now, as many readers are aware, DSM already supports Directory Services such as Active Directory and LDAPS for Postgres databases. See this earlier blog post on how to do that. But once Directory Services is configured in DSM, and selected during Postgres database provisioning, the DBA needs to create logins and grant access…

Support for iSCSI in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0

I recently received a query regarding support for iSCSI in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0. To be exact, the query was related to iSCSI-backed VMFS volumes, and if VCF 9.0 could be built using these volume types. It took a little bit of digging, and a few questions to our product management team, but I finally got an answer to the question. It is multi-faceted, as there is of course the VCF Management Domain and the VCF Workload Domains. There is also the concept of Principal and Supplemental storage to consider. Finally, there is the concept of “greenfield”, new deployments of…

VCF 9.0 Volume Service – Consuming static RWX volumes via VKS

Following on from my previous post on this topic, a number of people reached out to ask about how to add read-write-many (RWX) volumes to a Pod in VKS. Again, for dynamic volumes, this is quite simple to do. But what about some static volumes which were initially created by the Volume Service. This is a summary of what I posted in my previous blog in relation to RWX volumes. “Since RWX volumes are back by vSAN File Shares in VCF 9.0, you will need to have vSAN File Service enabled and configured. You will also have to tell the…

VCF 9.0 Volume Service – Consuming static volumes via VKS

I have been spending some time looking at the new Volume Service in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0. Through VCF Automation, is is possible for tenants of VCF to provision their own volumes. These volumes can be consumed by the VM Service, something that has been a part of the Supervisor Services for many years. However, it is also possible for workloads running in VKS, the vSphere Kubernetes Service, to consume the static volumes provisioned via the Volume Service. In this post, I will show you the steps to create a static volume via the Volume Service, and then create…

Getting started with DSM 9.0 and VCF Automation (Videos)

Continuing on from the VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) 9.0 introductory videos from my most recent post, these next two videos look at how to configure VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Automation in VCF 9.0 with DSM to provide a true DBaaS (Database as a Service) experience to your VCF tenants and end users. The first video looks at the setup steps and goes on to provision a Postgres database using a traditional, DSM-Manager infrastructure policy through VCF Automation. The second video uses a new feature of DSM 9.0 and VCF Automation. It demonstrates how one can build an Infrastructure Policy…