​This is Part 4 of the SQL 2017 Always-On Availability Group installation series. In this post we will manually install SQL 2017 on the first node of the cluster. We will then capture an answer file for SQL, which will be used ​for an unattended SQL installation on Node B...
This is Part 3 of the SQL 2017 Always-On Availability group series where we setup two service accounts and a security group. One account is for the database engine and the other is for the SQL agent. In order for Kerberos to work properly the database engine account must be...
First up in this series is deploying your two Windows Server 2016 VMs, which will be the SQL 2017 Always-on availability group nodes. Each VM should be configured with the same VM hardware properties. Selecting the right virtual hardware configuration is important, regardless of which hypervisor you are using. Memory,...
​In this series of posts I will show you how to configure SQL 2017 on Windows Server 2016 with Always-on Availability Groups. I will also be pointing out Nutanix AHV and VMware vSphere configuration best practices along the way. As you will see, 98% of the configuration is hypervisor independent.​SQL...
This post is part 2 of 2, of my NPX Architecture Guide how-to series. In this post we will cover sections 9 through 14, from the outline below. You can check out the first part of this series here. At the end I will also give you some more tips...
A couple of months ago I successfully defended my Nutanix Platform Expert (NPX) certification and became number 14 in the world to obtain the certification. You can read all about that journey here. As part of the NPX certification process you submit a documentation package which should cover all of...
​NPX Resources​Nutanix NPX Architecture Guide How-To (Part 1)Nutanix NPX Architecture Guide How-To (Part 2)​The JourneyAlmost four years ago to the month my career took a major turn. I just successfully passed the VMware VCDX datacenter virtualization certification, to become #125 in the world. You can read about my VCP5 to...
The other day I was at a customer for a fresh installation of Nutanix using vSphere 6.5. And for whatever reason, when they were resetting the ESXi root password to their default, it was fat fingered. When they went to add the hosts to vCenter, they couldn't add them since...
I'm proud to announce that the Nutanix Veeam Backup & Replication v9.5 guide has now been updated with U3 details. Specifically, in U3 there's a new registry key "EnableSameHostDirectNFSMode" that is now active for vSphere customers using DirectNFS. In Nutanix environments if you are using DirectNFS, you should configure this...
Yesterday I moved this blog over to Kinsta Wordpress hosting. Kinsta is a premium WordPress provider that utilizes Google Cloud Platform containers. You shouldn't see any changes to the blog. But if you see anything missing or links broken, please let me know.....via contact form, twitter, or leaving a comment....
In Part 1 of this series, Top WordPress Plugins you should use, I covered the first batch of what I think are useful plugins. This post is the second and last installment covering plugins that I use and might help you out. Of course each WordPress site is unique, and...
Introduction I'm a huge fan of WordPress, and I've had this blog hosted on WordPress for many years. Given my security background, I always try and make my site as secure as possible, while not breaking functionality. One important feature, both for SEO and security is SSL. All you need...