by Arjan | Jul 4, 2016 | Tech Field Day, Tech Field Day 11
During Tech Field Day 11 we had presentations from a lot of awesome companies. Some of them I knew, but others were new to me, and that while some of these already exist for multiple years. The first of these “older”companies was Netwrix.
When writing a couple of VMware designs in which compliancy was a big deal, I learned that a good auditing tool is a must have as the auditors will not approve anything if they you didn’t provide them with the right answers and tooling needed to be compliant. A tool like Netwrix can help a lot with this.
Netwrix History
So during Tech Field Day 11 I was pleased to see Netwrix do a great job at explaining where they came from and what they do. A couple of points that were told in this first presentation:
• The company is founded in 2006 (that’s right the company celebrates it’s 10th anniversary this year)
• The founders Michael Fimin and Alex Vovk, who both worked at Quest software before starting Netwrix.
• The company has no venture funding.
• The company has over 200 employees across the globe, and;
• They have over 7000 customers worldwide
But it might be better if you just watch part 1 of the presentation first:
Who is Netwrix? from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.
Netwrix Auditor Platform capabilities
The Netwrix auditor platform can help you audit and monitor multiple systems and application, the following are usable by default:
- Microsoft Active Directory
- Microsoft Exchange Server
- Microsoft Office 365
- Microsoft Sharepoint
- Microsoft SQL server
- VMware vSphere
- Windows File Server
- EMC
- NetApp
- Windows Server
Some of these are on-premises only, but a couple of them are also hybrid cloud capable, meaning you can audit your applications both on- and off-premises. Through the use of RESTful API’s both in and out bound you can leverage even more, but that is for a later blogpost :D.
Other TFD11 delegates on Netwrix
As always a couple of my TFD11 delegates also wrote some articles on Netwrix. Here are the articles already in the open (I’ll try to keep it updated, but I can’t promise anything :D):
Julian Wood (@julian_wood) wrote a great preview, the Tech Field Day 11 Preview: Netwrix
As well as Alaister Cook (@DemitasseNZ) did an introduction: TFD11 introduction: Netwrix
A small section on Netwrix can be found in the write-up by Drew Conry-Murray () at PacketPushers.net: Tech Field Day Goes To 11
And last but not least, Mark May () wrote a piece right after the presentation (showoff ;-P) called: Breaking down silos between security and operations
And as always, all Netwrix information and videos are available at the Tech Field Day site: Tech Field Day Netwrix
As already mentioned I’ll try to keep this post updated if people will write more on Netwrix, and I will also try to do a part two and three on Netwrix, but first I want to write a couple of post on other companies presenting at TFD11.
by Yannick Arens | Jun 14, 2016 | VMware, vRealize, vRealize Automation
This week I’m at the SDDC consulting training at the VMware EMEA HQ in Staines. There is a really full program with presentations and labs about the VMware SDDC portfolio. Products that will be covered in the training are:
- vRealize Automation
- vRealize Orchestrator
- VMware NSX
- VMware SRM
But the most important focus this week is the integration between all VMware products and 3th party products like InfoBlox and Service Now.
We started yesterday with the installation of a distributed vRealize Automation 6 environment. After clicking thru 281 pages of instruction the installation was finished. Some people in the class had problems with the lab base environment because of time out errors. The reason was a slow network connection not just slow but really really slow…
Dropped Packages
The lab environment consists of virtualized ESXi hosts and is using NSX for the networking part. In NSX there is some bug (or should I say undocumented feature ;-)) that cause lots of packet drops when using virtualized ESXi hosts and NSX. The solution to work around is to create DRS rules to keep some of the VMs (the ones you are working on) together on a virtualized ESXi host so all network traffic is kept locally. I think it’s also possible you experience the same slow connection if you are doing the VMware Hands On Labs because the setup is probably the same.
Strange names
Today when booting up my lab again I had the issue that the infrastructure tab had a strange name. The name was changed in: com.vmware.csp.component.iaas.proxy.provider@csp.places.iaas.label instead of just Infrastructure. All underlying tabs had the same problems. If you know where to click everything is still working, but it doesn’t feel good.
The solution to this problem is to just reboot some nodes of the vRA installation. But wait, which of the 10 servers do need a reboot? The answer is nearly all of them. The boot order for the complete stack is:
- Microsoft SQL Database server
- Identity appliance
- vRealize appliance 1
- vRealize appliance 2
- IAAS webserver 1 & 2 (vRealize webportal and ModelManagerData services)
- Application server 1 ( primary IAAS Manager and the DEM Orchestrator Server services)
- Application server 2 (secondary IAAS Manager and the DEM Orchestrator Server services)
- Proxy server 1 & 2 (DEM worker and Proxy Agent server services)
Rebooting from step 3 will resolve this issue. First shutdown all services in the reverse order and when you are at the vRealize appliance 1 just reboot this one. Wait till the VAMI is showing up in the console and then (and not earlier!) start the next one of the list. If the server is a Windows server give it some extra time to boot up all services.
If everything is restarted then you will see the normally names and tabs.
by Yannick Arens | Apr 5, 2016 | SimpliVity
This is a cross post from my Metis IT blogpost, which you can find here.
Today, April 5, 2016, SimpliVity announced new capabilities of the OmniStack Data Virtualization Platform. The announcement consists of three subjects:
- OmniStack 3.5
- OmniView
- Hyper-V
Omnistack 3.5
This new version is the first major update of this year and I hope there will come more updates. The latest major release, version 3.0, was in the early second half of 2015. SimpliVity say this new version will deliver new capabilities optimized for large, mission-critical and global enterprise deployments. Besides improvements to the code, this release will add three new main capabilities to the OmniStack Data Virtualization Platform.
Stretched Clusters
The first improvement in the OmniStack software is the ability to create multi-node stretched clusters. In the current versions it is only possible to create a stretched cluster with a total of 2 nodes divided over two sites. This limit is now increased and supported by default. With a stretched cluster it will be possible to achieve a RPO of zero and a RTO of seconds.
Intelligent Workload Optimizer
The second new capability is the Intelligent Workload Optimizer. SimpliVity will use a multi-dimensional approach to balance the workload over the platform. The balancing will be based on CPU, Memory, I/O performance and Data Location. This will result in less data migrations and a greater virtual machine improvement.
REST API
And the last new capability in the OmniStack Software is the REST API. In version 3.5 it will be possible to use the REST API to manage the SimpliVity data virtualization platform. It was already possible to integrate with VMware vRealize Automation but now it will be a lot easier to integrate with third-party management portals and applications.
OmniView
OmniView Predictive Insight tool is the second part of the announcement. OmniView is a web-based tool that gives custom visualization of an entire SimpliVity deployment. It can give predictive analytics and trends within a SimpliVity environment and helps to plan future grow. The tool can also help to investigate and troubleshoot issues within the environment. OmniView will be available for Mission-Critical-level support customers and approved partners.
Hyper-V
The last part of the announcement is support for Hyper-V. The OmniStack Data Virtualization platform will be extended to this platform to give customers more choice. SimpliVity will support mixed and dedicated Hyper-V environments with the release of Windows Server 2016. Planning and timing about the availability is aligned to the release of Microsoft Windows Server 2016.
Conclusion
The announcement is a great step in the right direction and I think just-in-time. For me the most important part of the announcement is the announcement of version 3.5 and more specifically the support for stretched clusters. In more and more large European organizations stretched cluster support is a requirement nowadays and SimpliVity will now have the ability to support this. Also the REST API will help to integrate SimpliVity in an existing ecosystem of a customer.
The OmniView Predictive Insight tool will give customers insight to their SimpliVity environment and provide predictive analytics and forecasts. In the current 3.0 version it was only possible to get some statistics about the storage but now you will have a self-learning system which customers can use to improve their environment.
The Hyper-V support announcement is also a long-awaited one. Now we only have to wait till Microsoft will release Windows Server 2016 to use this feature.
