We are super excited to announce that vElements.net has been selected among the top 25 Virtualization blogs by Feedspot. During the past three years, we have been working hard to publish technical articles to assist the community.
This selection at Feedspot is based on the following criteria:
Google reputation and Google search ranking
Influence and popularity on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites
Quality and consistency of posts
Feedspot’s editorial team and expert review
We really appreciate the support we get from the community and it gives us the energy to continue this journey!
After a long wait, VMware finally announced NSX-T 3.2 on November 7th, 2021! There was a lot of buzz around this release for the past 2-3 months. In this article, we will look at the new features of this release. The new capabilities are grouped into three major areas; Security, Advanced Networking, and Simplified Operations, which I will list as the most significant enhancements in this article.
When we look at the new features and capabilities list, security enhancements are very bold. So let’s start with the security features and continue with networking and operations enhancements.
Upgrading vRealize Log Insight is a pretty straightforward process. You need to download the upgrade PAK file from VMware website. Then under the Administration section of the vRLI dashboard, under Management click on Cluster, and on the right panel, select Upgrade Cluster. You might have a standard non-cluster vRLI environment but doesn’t matter the upgrade process goes the same path both for standard and cluster environments. Then you just feed the wizard with the downloaded PAK file and then start the upgrade process. Super easy huh?!
It should go that easy, but as you know, when working in the field things always don’t go as planned!
If you are using vRealize Suite’s solutions like vRealize Operation, vRealize Automation, or vRealize Log Insight, then vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager(vRSLCM) comes in handy into day to day operations. This product automates the deployment, configuration, and upgrade of the vRealize Suite. If you plan to deploy any of vRealize products or even automate the Day 2 operations like certificate replacement, then vRSLCM is a go-to tool for your use case. It is also worth mentioning that some products like vRelaize Automation(vRA) use this solution as a built-in tool for the deployment process. It is recommended to deploy vRSLCM first and then deploy and other vRealize Suite products due to ease of installation and configuration orchestration. But if you already deployed any of the suite’s products, you can also add them into vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager.
In this blog post and following video tutorial, I show you how to deploy vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager with Easy Installer and lay the foundation for the rest of vRealize Suite products deployment. The license for this product is included in any edition of the vRealize Suite licensing package.
Earlier this month, VMware released a new version of HCX, the powerful multi-cloud migration solution. With the help of HCX, you can easily migrate your virtual workloads between private clouds and, more importantly, to public cloud environments like Azure VMware Solution(AVS). Additionally, when HCX is being used in conjunction with public cloud SDDCs like AVS, cloud migrations would be as easy as running a vMotion internally inside your data center. Sounds great, isn’t it!
It is also important to note that many enterprises are using only site-to-site VPN as the connectivity method for on-prem to public cloud infrastructure. Because of this, formal support of HCX over VPN underlay has been asked by many organizations and customers.
As cloud network engineers, we should ensure that name resolution functions properly both in on-premises environments and public cloud infrastructure. As part of the AZ-700 Study Guide, this blog post will discuss the deployment of DNS service on Azure. It is vital to set up the DNS service because, like Microsoft Azure, we still need to resolve FQDNs to respective IP addresses on public cloud infrastructure. In addition, we might also need to utilize DNS to discover services. Microsoft Azure provides both public and private DNS zone for Internet and internal name resolution. There is also a built-in Azure-provides DNS that works by default on vNets, and if needed, there are custom DNS zones available to use.
The previous AZ-700 Study Guide blog posts covered Site-to-Site VPN, Point-to-Site VPN, and Azure ExpressRoute. In this post, we will explore private IP addressing in Azure Virtual Networks(vNets). The fundamental building block of private networking in Azure is based on vNets. This construct is a Layer 3 networking construct and has CIDR-block attached to it. This CIDR-block represents the private IP address space that network components can use on your Azure infrastructure. Proper design and implementation of this private IP addressing are crucial due to its effect on all other networking design decisions and deployment in Azure.
In two previous posts, we covered Azure Site-to-Site VPN and Point-to-Site VPN. The next objective of AZ-700’s Hybrid networking is designing and deploying Azure ExpressRoute. ExpressRoute is a method to extend your On-Premises network into the Microsoft cloud with the help of ExpressRoute service providers. If you need a private/high-speed connection to access Microsoft cloud services like Azure or Office 365, ExpressRoute is the right solution. This connectivity method doesn’t use the public Internet, and thus it provides higher security, more bandwidth, and higher reliability than Site-to-Site VPN. Many organizations want to avoid public Internet for cloud extension in terms of networking, and here is where ExpressROute could shine as the proper solution. The private connection is provided by specific connectivity partners, and based on your location; you have few options to choose from.
In the previous blog post, we covered Azure Site-to-Ste VPN. As part of the Azure AZ-700 Study Guide, this blog post continues with another hybrid networking technology that allows client endpoints to connect to Azure vNet infrastructure. Besides connecting your headquarter and branch office networks to Azure, it is also vital to have an infrastructure to provide connectivity to your mobile users. Using Point-to-Site Virtual Private Network(P2S VPN), client endpoints can connect and use Azure services. You can implement P2S VPN on Route-based Azure VPN gateways and provide a secure connectivity option to your users.
Design and implement a hybrid networking infrastructure is part of every cloud adoption project. Organizations planning to embrace public cloud services and migrate resources to Azure usually need communication channels between the on-premises environments and Azure. One of the widely used technologies that provide the required communication channel is Site-to-Site Virtual Private Network (S2S VPN). To deploy such a communication channel, you will set up a VPN IPSec tunnel between an On-premise gateway and Azure VPN gateway. As part of the Azure AZ-700 Study Guide, in this blog post, we are going to explorer Azure S2S VPN
