Year: 2014

vSphere 5.1 U3 Now Out

Right on the heels of VMware Workstation 11 being released, VMware has released vSphere 5.1 U3. No major new features, but according to the release notes there is support for new guest operating systems (without being specific) and it also resolves a number of issues. Also updated in this release...

VMware Workstation 11 & Player 7 Pro Out

Hot off the presses is the release of VMware Workstation 11, and Player 7 Pro. Even though I have a full blown ESXi lab at home, I still find uses for VMware Workstation. For example, I have Windows 10 tech preview running in a Workstation VM. For those of you...

SQL 2014 AlwaysOn AG Pt. 13: SSL

As we near the end of this installation series, there are a couple of final areas to cover. Up in this installment is configuring SSL. Now you may be thinking, SQL and SSL, really? Yes, for a good number of years SQL has supported the use of SSL for database...

SQL 2014 Always-on AG Pt. 12: Kerberos

We are nearing the end of the SQL 2014 AlwaysOn Availability Group series, with just Kerberos and SSL left to configure. In this installment we tackle Kerberos. Depending on your environment, you may or may not need Kerberos configured. Kerberos is only effective when using Windows authentication to your SQL server, not...

Adding a GUI Back to Windows Server Core

The other day I had the occasion where I wanted to add back the Windows Server 2012 R2 GUI to a server core installation. This was a test environment, and for what I was testing I felt the GUI provided a more streamlined experience. Server core certainly has its places,...

SQL 2014 Always-on AG Pt. 11: File Share Witness

Now that we have our SQL AAG up and running, there's still some configuration left to do. In this installment I cover SQL 2014 file share witness confiugration. In my example I'm doing a 2-node AAG, which means that we need a file share witness to help establish quorum. If...

SQL 2014 Always-on AG Pt. 10: AAG Setup

After a brief pause in this SQL 2014 AlwaysOn Availability Group series, we are resuming with the server configuration. In this installment we will configure the Windows firewall to allow the two SQL servers to communicate to each other, configure a shared folder for the SQL replication, and finally configure...

Nutanix Announces All Flash Array

In very exciting news Nutanix announced the industry's first hyperconverged all flash appliance, the NX-9240.  What makes this puppy special? Well it's a 2U appliance which contains two compute nodes, each with 6 SSDs. The SSDs can be either 800GB or the 1.6TB models. This means up to 19.2TB of RAW...

Running IOmeter on Nutanix

Sometimes Nutanix customers or prospective customers will want to perform IOmeter testing to ensure the block is performing up to par. Or maybe they are upgrading to a new NOS release or doing a POC and want to ballpark performance. Performing benchmarks on a Hypeconvered platform like Nutanix is a bit different than the...

Sample VCDX-DCV Architecture Outline

This post covers my approach to writing my VCDX-DCV Architecture Guide. I've been debating in my mind for a while whether I should write this post or not. I hesitated for a few reasons. First, I'm just a regular guy that happened to jump through the VCDX hoops and have no "insider"...

SQL 2014 Always-on AG Pt. 9: SQL Maintenance

In this blog installment we configure some critical SQL maintenance checks and run a configuration check script to see how well our SQL server is configured. A big shout out to Brent Ozar and Ola Hallengren for their outstanding SQL Server scripts and blog resources. These scripts are must-haves for all SQL...

SQL 2014 Always-on AG Pt. 8: Max Mem & Email

In this installment of the SQL 2014 Always-on Availability how-to we are configuring two very important parameters: SQL server max memory and email alert notifications. Both settings are often overlooked, yet are critical to a properly performing and healthy SQL server cluster. Even if you are using a tool like SCOM or...

Page 1 of 4 1 2 4