In this installment of the vSphere 5.5 installation how-to series we cover upgrading ESXi hosts, VMs, and VMFS. As stated in my vCenter 5.5 upgrade post, I'm not going to do a step-by-step screenshot filled posts for upgrades. Why? Too many different deployment types for that to be widely useful. But you do need...
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. vSphere 5.1 taught us that thorough testing cannot be skipped and you should not rush a new product...
Imagine having this dream: You are in the VMware company grocery store where each isle displays a VMware product, shelves fully and neatly stocked with product. You wonder over to the isle labeled 'SSO 5.1'. To your horror you see a huge mess: SSL certs lying all over the floor, incorrectly configured...
At VMworld 2013 in San Francisco VMware unveiled vSphere 5.5, the successor to vSphere 5.1. Customers are now chomping at the bit for vSphere 5.5 upgrade information. Of great anticipation was what VMware did to the vSphere 5.1 SSO service to address common complaints. If you've been living under a rock,...
So here we are, at the end of a somewhat long journey. Yes, this is the last installment in the SQL 2012 Failover cluster series. However, two very important settings are configured. The first is Kerberos, which is the preferred authentication protocol (vice NTLM). In fact, some software will break...
The SQL 2012 failover cluster series is finally starting to wind down. While this is not the last installment, it's pretty darn close. In this session we configure some critical SQL maintenance checks and run a configuration check script to see how badly our SQL server is configured. A big...
In this installment of the SQL 2012 failover cluster guide 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. Blog Series SQL 2012 Failover Cluster Pt. 1:...
One of the most important aspects of SQL performance is TempDB. Applications can use TempDB as a scratch space, and in most cases you should not rely on just a single TempDB file. Current best practices is to create 1/4-1/2 the number of TempDB files that you have processor cores....
I'm a big proponent of using the Windows firewall on all computers, be they clients or servers. It may not be perfect, but it's better than nothing. Layered defenses are key in the enterprise, so protecting each host may save your bacon some day. Many programs automatically add Windows firewall...
Yes, we are finally at Part 7 of the SQL 2012 failover cluster install. Now that your first node is healthy, we can join the second node to the cluster. The installer process is fairly different, since it will detect your existing cluster and ask you far fewer questions. It...
This is Part 6 of the SQL failover cluster installation, where we finally get to install the SQL Server database engine and related tools. It's been a tedious road, and you likely ran into some cluster creation issues. This is not for the faint of heart, and should not be...
This is Part 5 of the SQL 2012 failover clustering series where we setup two service accounts. One is for the database engine and the other is for the SQL agent. In order for Kerberos to work properly, and for the cluster to work at all, they must be Active Directory...