VMware has provided new SSL template guidance for vSphere 6.0. New to vSphere 6.0 are machine SSL certificates, solution user certificates, and using the VMCA as a subordinate CA. If you are using an enterprise Microsoft CA, then this article is for you. I'll show you how to create the...
Now that we have the PSC installed, it's time to configure the variables for the Toolkit script, and also make sure we can download our root certificates. Depending on your configuration, you may need to manually download your root public certificates. VMware needs certificates in a specific format, and they...
Now that we have the Windows PSC installed, it is time to prepare for installing vCenter. vCenter can support three database types: embedded vPostGres (supports up to 20 hosts and 2000 VMs), Microsoft SQL, and Oracle. SQL seems to be the most popular choice, so that's what I'll help you...
In this installment of the vSphere 6.0 installation how-to series we cover upgrading ESXi hosts, VMs, and VMFS. You do need to understand ESXi/VM/VMFS upgrade best practices, recommended order, and gotchas. That’s what this post is for. Blog Series vSphere 6.0 Install Pt. 1: Introduction vSphere 6.0 Install Pt. 2: Platform Services Controller vSphere...
Today Nutanix is proud to announce their Nutanix Platform Expert (NPX) certification. You can read the official press release here. The goal of this certification is to become the most rigorous technical computing qualification in the IT industry. That's saying a lot, given other live performance based certifications that people are going...
Upgrades can be scary times with any enterprise product. The more your critical infrastructure relies on a particular solution, or set of solutions, the more imperative it is you fully understand and test the new product. Prior vSphere releases has taught us that thorough testing cannot be skipped and you should not rush a new...
After some teasing at VMworld 2014, and a few more sessions at PEX 2015, vSphere 6.0 is finally available for download! If you are in a big hurry to download, here are some useful links. vSphere 6.0 release notes can be found here. As always, TEST TEST TEST before putting...
Each year Eric Siebert over at vSphere-land.com spends an enormous amount of time setting up the top blogger voting. This recognizes the very hard work that the top bloggers do, and the support they give to the community. Recognition is always fun, but shouldn't be the primary purpose to blog....
Introduction As long as I can recall certificate management in vSphere has been difficult, and for many customers, something they completely ignore. I'm surprised how many customer designs (even those done by VCDXs) I've seen where they feel it's too difficult to deploy vSphere certificates so they accept the risk...
Disclaimer: VMTurbo is a sponsor of this blog. Do you need a free home lab? Then register for the upcoming VMTurbo 5.1 webinar and get a chance to win a free home lab. Three lucky winners will be chosen at random so carve out an hour of your day and...
One of the never ending tasks in IT is keeping up with software builds and firmware updates. These are usually a somewhat painful process, may require downtime, and can often get pushed to the back burner of IT life. At Nutanix we recognized that pain point, and starting in NOS...
Now that we've gotten some background and best practices behind us, now it's time to start the actual software installation. As previously mentioned, in all but the smallest environments it's recommended to have a dedicated Platform Services Controller (PSC), rather than an embedded one. So first up here will be...