In my VMware Data Services Manager 9.1 launch post, I mentioned that this release now has the ability to use vSAN ESA snapshots to create a copy of a MySQL database. I also mentioned that this snapshot could then be used to very quickly spin up additional copies of the database using the “clone from snapshot” feature. I also mentioned that this feature is not yet plumbed up into the VCF Automation UI, but that it is available via the API. And since that is the case, it is then possible to go ahead and create VCF Automation blueprint. The…
In my most recent post, we looked at the steps to deploy the new Data Services Manager 9.1 SQL Server data service. In that post, we created an infrastructure policy to allocate vSphere resources such as CPU, Memory, Networking and Storage to the SQL Server Engine and subsequent databases. We saw how this approach can offer a DBaaS (Database as a Service) to your end-users, allowing consumers to use the DSM portal to provision their own databases on an existing SQL Server instance. In this post, we want to take that a step further and show how Data Services Manager…
It gives me great pleasure to announce the availability of Data Services Manger version 9.1. This releases sees a new data service, Microsoft SQL Server, now included in Data Services Manager. I know many of our customers are anticipating this data service, so it is great to finally announce it. The Data Services Manager 9.1 release also brings tighter integration with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) version 9.1 and VCF Automation version 9.1. Both of these exciting features will be covered in deep-dive posts over the coming weeks, but today, I want this post to briefly highlight all of the new…
A very quick message to let you know that I was recently invited to present on VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) by our VMware TAM (Technical Account Manager) Services team. In the video, I provide an update to our TAM customers on our current DSM version 9.0.2, and give some insight into our latest tech preview of the Microsoft SQL Server DBaaS service as well as a demonstration on how our full integration of DSM into VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x and VCF Automation is progressing. Hope you find it useful and informative. Feel free to reach out to me via…
One of the new features in VCF Automation version 9.0.1 is a feature called vSphere Kubernetes Service Management, or VKSM for short. This gives users access to many additional capabilities, such as Data Protection, Policy Management and Add-on Management to improve the resiliency, security, and functionality of your VKS clusters. In this post, I wanted to take a look at the Data Protection capability (VKSM DP for short), as this is something I looked at quite closely in the past. To demonstrate, we will first configure a backup location, then enable Data Protection, then test a backup and restore of…
As many readers are now aware, databases provisioned from DSM via VCF Automation have the option to create a vSphere Kubernetes Service cluster to host the database. The decision to use a VKS cluster or whether to use DSM’s own Kubernetes cluster is based on the Infrastructure Policy. If the Infrastructure Policy is built on traditional vSphere resources, then DSM’s own K8s is used. If the Infrastructure Policy points to a Supervisor Namespace, then VKS is used. In this post, I wanted to provide some tips and tricks on accessing and troubleshooting the DSM database and VKS cluster backing the…
In this post, we will take a look at another new feature of VCF Automation, IaaS Resource Policies. I will demonstrate how these IaaS policies can be used with Data Service Policies and DSM provisioned databases to fine-tune certain parameters related to the database. You may have already seen the concept of Data Service Policies in previous posts. These are policies set at the Provider level which can dictate which database engines, which database versions and which backup locations a tenant of an organization can consume. However additional validations or constraints in an IaaS policy can be applied at an…