Gathering logs in VMware Data Services Manager v1.5

The ability to gather logs is an essential part of troubleshooting any product. Logs can help you to resolve issues on your own, but may also be necessary should you need to engage with a technical support organizations. In this post, we will look at the various log bundles which can be gathered from a VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) deployment. We will see the different logs associated with the different layers of VMware DSM. We will also examine which roles have permissions to gather the various log bundles. Roles in VMware DSM Let’s begin with a review of the…

Validating Kubernetes cluster conformance with Sonobuoy

Another product added to the VMware portfolio with the acquisition of Heptio is Sonobuoy. In a nutshell, Sonobuoy will validate the state of your Kubernetes cluster by running a suite of non-destructive tests against your cluster. As part of the end-to-end (e2e) tests that are run by Sonobuoy, there is a also a subset of conformance tests run as well. These include things like best practices and interoperability tests. This will ensure that your Kubernetes cluster (whether is an upstream version or a third-party packaged version) supports all of the necessary Kubernetes APIs. You can read more about conformance here.…

PKS – Networking Setup Tips and Tricks

In my previous post, I showed how to deploy Pivotal Container Services (PKS) on a simplified flat network. In this post, I will highlight some of the issues one might encounter if you wish to deploy PKS on a more complex network topology. For example, you may have vCenter Server on a vSphere management network alongside the PKS management components (PKS  CLI client, Pivotal Ops Manager). You may then want to have another “intermediate network” for the deployment of the BOSH and PKS VMs. And then finally, you may finally have another network on which the Kubernetes (K8s) VMs (master,…

Technical Support Summit 2018

Troubleshoot with the experts Next month will see the next technical support summit, which will be held in Cork, Ireland. This is a jam-packed 2-day event which will see our lead technical support engineers in EMEA deliver deep-dive technical troubleshooting workshops to attendees.  This has something for everyone, ranging from vRealize Operations and Log Insight, to NSX, vSAN, vRealize Automation and Security. The full agenda is here:

A closer look at Runecast

Last week, I had the pleasure of catching up with a new startup called Runecast. These guys are doing something that is very close to my heart. As systems become more and more complex, and with fewer people taking on more responsibility, highlighting potential issues, and providing descriptive guidance to resolving an issue is now critical. This is something that is resonating in the world of HCI, hyper-converged infrastructure, where the vSphere administrator may also be the storage administrator, and perhaps the network administrator too. This is where Runecast come in. Using a myriad of resources such as VMware’s Knowledgebase…

A new vRealize Log Insight Content Pack for VSAN

Attention VSAN users. A new Log Insight content pack has just been released specifically for Virtual SAN. For those of you not familiar with Log Insight, this product does automated log management through log analytics, aggregation and search. It allows administrators to analyze terabytes of logs, perform smart parsing to discover structure in unstructured data, and enable interactive, real-time search and analytics through a GUI-based, easy to use interface.

My VMworld Session – VSAN Monitoring & Troubleshooting – now available

Another of the break-out sessions that I presented at VMworld 2015 in San Francisco on Virtual SAN (VSAN) has been recorded and is now available on the VMworld site. I co-presented “STO6228 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Virtual SAN, Current and Future” with Christian Dickmann of VMware, who did the latter part of the session. I do the initial introduction, talking briefly about VSAN, and then the various tools that we now have for monitoring and troubleshooting. Christian then takes the stage to talk about how things have progressed over the past year, certain use cases and some future plans we have…