Getting started with Data Services Manager v2.1

The latest version of Data Services Manager (DSM) is now available. DSM version 2.1 delivers a new set of capabilities and functionality, including simplified deployment, MySQL Clustering, LDAP access to databases, Certificate Management, and log shipping enhancements. In this post, I will go through the deployment process of DSM version 2.1 as there are some significant differences when compared the 2.0.x user experience. Our aim is to make the whole process of deployment in 2.1 a lot easier. In future posts, I will look at the other enhancements in more detail, but for now I just want to focus on…

Data Services Manager version 2.1 now available

It gives me great pleasure to announce the availability of Data Services Manager version 2.1. The team have been working tirelessly on this release to deliver on new features and functionality. In this post, I will cover a number of the big ticket items found in this release. In later posts, I will delve into these features in more detail, so watch this space. Visit the DSM section of the Broadcom Support Portal to download the product. VMware Cloud Foundation customers are automatically entitled to DSM, and in this release we are making it even easier to stand up your…

Multi-Factor/External Authentication on VMware Cloud Foundation

I recently had a question about multi-factor authentication within VCF, VMware Cloud Foundation. I was able to find out the answer after sending the query to a few folks on the VCF team. It transpires that VMware have recently delivered MFA (Duo support) and external Authn/AuthZ (Oasis, SAML, OKtA, AzureAD, PING) via a joint partner solution with Entrust. Support for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and SDDC Manager appears in HyTrust CloudControl, Version 6.4. Per the CloudControl Administration Guide, when SDDC manager is added to CloudControl, the inventory of the vSphere and NSX-T resources can be viewed. Access control policies can…

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.1 – What’s new?

To coincide with a new release of vSphere 7.0U1 and vSAN 7.0U1, there is also a new release of VMware Cloud Foundation releasing. This is VCF version 4.1. In this release, as well as a bunch of updates to the versions of the various VMware products that make up the VCF bill of materials, there are also some nice new enhancements. In this post, I’ll highlight the big features that I know a number of customers are interested in. Support for vVols as a Principal Storage for Workload Domains Virtual Volumes (vVols) is gaining more and more traction among VMware…

vSphere with Kubernetes on VCF 4.0.1 Consolidated Architecture

VMware recently announced that availability of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.0.1. I was particularly interested in this release as it introduced some enhancements around vSphere with Kubernetes deployments on the VCF Management Domain. We refer to the deployment of an application onto the management domain as a VCF consolidated architecture. Whilst we were able to deploy vSphere with Kubernetes on the management domain in VCF version 4.0, it was not seamlessly integrated. In particular, it was not possible to select the management domain to do the necessary vSphere for Kubernetes validation tests. In VCF 4.0.1, it is now possible to…

vSphere with Kubernetes on VCF 4.0 Consolidated Architecture

Since the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.0 over 1 month ago, I have been asked one question repeatedly – when can I run vSphere with Kubernetes (formerly known as Project Pacific) on a VCF 4.0 Consolidated Architecture? In other words, when can I deploy vSphere with Kubernetes on the Management Domain rather than building a separate VI Workload Domain to run it. The main reason for this request is because this reduces the number of ESXi hosts required to run vSphere with Kubernetes from 7 down to 4. So I am delighted to announce that we now have…

vSphere with Kubernetes – Namespaces, Harbor and PodVMs (Video)

This short video will show you some of the initial steps that one might take once vSphere with Kubernetes has been successfully deployed via VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.0 and SDDC Manager. And FYI, as I know a number of reader have been asking this question, VCF 4.0 is now officially GA. In this short video, I will introduce you to the namespace concept in vSphere with Kubernetes as a way of allocating vSphere resources between multiple tenants. As well, we will see how to enable and use Harbor as a Container Image Registry. Finally we will deploy a StatefulSet…