An IT Professional with over 20 years’ experience with broad consultative, technical and managerial experience. Currently a solution architect working with customers and partners to architect and deliver hybrid cloud solutions using the VMware and other leading IT technologies. Leading and supporting business transformation programs, digital enterprise enablement programmes covering organisations in both private and public sectors.
A former leader of the Bristol and South West VMUG (VMware User Group)
Simon holds multiple high level industry certifications for IT Architecture, Cloud Management and Automation. He is also a proud member of the vExpert community, holding the vExpert accolade from 2014-present, as well as being selected for the vExpert Cloud Management sub-programs.
Simon is currently working for Xtravirt as a Solution Architect and can usually be found on twitter @simoneady
Wednesday I had lined up several sessions so I was quick to get along to my first session - Operational Remediation with vRealize Operations… Tying it All Together - #MGT5735. The session was excellent and gave a great overview and introduction to what is possible with remediation in vROps 6.1. Big thanks to Chima Njaka for this session.
Aside from a few other sessions I spent a lot of the afternoon in the VMUG lounge with my colleagues from @xtravirt (see pic below) and meeting lots of other folk from the around the globe (this is what makes this conference so very great for me), putting faces to twitter handles for the first time and so on.
The first full day of VMworld after PEX was a busy one.
After the keynote (highlights were the docker announcements) I was on “booth babe” duty at the VMUG lounge. It was great to meet so many folk who were existing VMUG members and leaders as well as prospective new members. If you are at VMworld this year you should definitely stop by!
After lunch I hit the solutions exchange to catch up with a few vendors whom I had a few queries for also took the time to collect the #vExpert hoodie from @simplivity and the #vExpert tile from Tegile (thank you!
It’s PEX (Partner Exchange Day) at VMworld today so its busy but not the Tuesday (first day) of VMworld busy, last night saw a fantastic #vRockstar party and a great chance to meet and have a beer with many vTwitteratti.
Today of course has been largely overshadowed by the big new concerning the Dell announcement to purchase EMC which has triggered a great deal of discussion and a healthy amount of banter and snark!
Recently the team I am working with came across an interesting bug/issue with actions missing from deployed VMs. We had checked and double checked the entitlements yet the actions that should be available to the end-user/customer were not listed.
Everything appeared to point to a permissions issue until one of the team members noticed something with regards to blueprints in the catalog.
Before I continue with what we observed and how we “fixed” it please bear in mind the blueprints were created programmatically.
I must admit I have been quite keen to get a look at vROps 6.1 so I was quick to upgrade my lab from 6.0 to 6.1 (with not problems I might add) and have a good look at the new bits and pieces.
The bits I will cover briefly in this post are..
Upgrading from 6.0 EPO functionality Dashboards Automated actions (ON?) Upgrading from 6.0 Ensure you upgrade the OS of the appliance first (if you have one) - vRealize Operations Manager - Virtual Appliance Operating System upgrade (vRealize_Operations_Manager-VA-OS-6.
So vROps 6.1 has gone GA!
What have the guys at VMware added? I have listed what I consider the hi-lights below
The maximum of 8 nodes has been doubled to 16!
SSO integration has been added (requires vSphere 6.0)
**Support for SRM has been added
**
vRealize Hyperic functionality has been added
With the addition of End Point Operations Management, the value of vRealize Hyperic functionality has been extended to the vRealize Operations Manager core product, without the need to deploy vRealize Hyperic
One of the great new features included in vROps is High Availability, however when you look a little closer at how it works careful thought needs to go into whether you want to use it or not.
I have had several discussions with my colleagues on the subject about whether you should or should not enable it in any given deployment of a vROps cluster.
So the following are my thoughts and bullet points for you to consider when faced with same dilemma.
Recently I have been working with various products that compliment or are accessed by vCOPs/vROps via Management packs.
As vROps is still fairly new in comparative terms to other products like vCOPs and VCE Vision, when planning migrations from vCOPs to vROps it is naturally important to check compatibility and what is required for a successful migration.
If you are doing a greenfield deployment of vROps there is nothing to be concerned about, you simply need the VCE Vision appliance running version 2.
A few months ago I decided to tackle the VCAP5-DCD exam and when booking I gave myself 2 months to study before the date of the exam.
I was keenly aware that at least in this calendar year the VCAP5-DCD exam and undergone some changes E.G. it no longer had multiple choice questions (think VCP5-DCV in terms of format)
There was a wealth of knowledge out there from people whom had either passed/failed or were currently studying so it didn’t take too long to get an understanding of what disciplines/knowledge VMware were looking for in the exam.
Recently I have been looking at William Lam’s excellent post on automating the deployment of vROps.
After having a play around with it, to suit my own needs, I made some modifications to the Powershell script so it would support distributed switches.
# William Lam
# Edited by Simon Eady to support vDS
# www.virtuallyghetto.com
# Deployment of vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 (vROps)
### NOTE: SSH can not be enabled because hidden properties do not seem to be implemented in Get-OvfConfiguration cmdlet ###
