In a post from last year, I demonstrated how one could use the VCF CLI to troubleshoot the underlying vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) on which a VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) database is provisioned. In this follow up post, we will look at how we can use the VCF CLI to fine tune the database itself. This blog post stemmed from a request by one of our customers who wished to modify the backup retention policy and reduce the number of days that a backup is retained. Now you might be wondering why using the VCF CLI is necessary to…
In my introduction post to VMware Data Services (DSM) 9.1.1, I mentioned a new feature called PostgreSQL read replicas. In a nutshell, PostgreSQL databases provisioned by DSM can now be scaled for read workloads by adding additional Read Replicas. Previously, a PostgreSQL database cluster was limited to just 3 nodes, a primary, a single replica and a monitor. In DSM 9.1.1, we can now scale PostgreSQL databases through the addition of read replicas. As I mentioned in the introduction to DSM 9.1.1, DSM now uses the term read replica instead of secondary to refer to remote PostgreSQL database instances. They…
In my initial post introducing VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) 9.1.1 features, I mentioned that DSM can now be deployed directly from VCF Automation. As part of a concerted effort to make Data Services (and the VCF platform) highly secure, SSH access is not automatically enabled on the DSM 9.1.1 appliance. In this post, I will show you how to enable it should you need SSH access to the DSM appliance. The first step is to gain SSH Access to the vCenter server. The steps are outlined in this Knowledge Base article on troubleshooting. Once you’ve managed to get a…
VMware introduced support for Microsoft SQL Server as a data service in VMware Data Services Manager version 9.1. In version 9.1.1, there are a number of enhancements, some of which I will highlight in this post. If you want to get the full list of enhancements, check out the VMware Data Services Manager 9.1.1. Release Notes. One of the major changes in version 9.1.1 is to enable the VCF Automation (VCFA) Provider Administrators to provision the SQL Server instances / engines directly from VCFA, rather than context switching back to the DSM UI to do it. Once the SQL Server…
One of the interesting new features of VMware Data Services Manager when it is integrated with VCF automation is the Network Security feature. In a nutshell, what this feature does is implement both distributed firewall rules and gateway firewall rules for each DSM database deployed via VCF Automation. Let’s take a closer look. By default, Net work Security is disabled. The VCFA Provider Admin will need to activate it. Navigate to VCF Services > Data Services. In the Data Services Manager menu, select Advanced. Here you will find the button to activate Network Security. When the Activate button is clicked,…
As part of the latest VMware Cloud Foundation version 9.1.1 release (see this link for more details), it gives me great pleasure to announce that we also have a new 9.1.1 version of VMware Data Services Manager (DSM). This is a not just a patch release. It is a release that is chock-full of new features and enhancements. I will share the details with you in this post. This 9.1.1 DSM release is building on top of some of the cool features that we provided in DSM & VCF version 9.1. In later posts, I will delve into some of…
I was recently asked to assist with some troubleshooting of the Email Alerting mechanism in Data Services Manager (DSM). The first thing to note is that there are different types of alerts that can be raised and emailed in DSM. The first type are Global Alerts, and these are emailed to the DSM Admin. The second type are Database Alerts, and these are emailed to all of the DSM Users (permissions) who are part of the DSM Namespace where the database is provisioned. Those of you familiar with Data Services Manager will know DSM Users are granted permission to provision…