Category: VxRail

  • VCF Skip Level Tool

    The VCF Skip Level Tool (SLT) facilitates software upgrades of VCF on VxRail to either the latest or a specified target version. The tool enables preceding versions of software to be skipped, speeding up upgrade. The 4 clips here discuss and demonstrate the SLT. Part 1 of 4 / clip…

  • Why Smart Fabric Services with VxRail?

    In recent discussions with customers about their environments, I have noticed the conversation has naturally evolved to the benefits of Smart Fabric Services (SFS) and networking, even though I wasn’t brought in to talk about networks. Many of the customers I talk with need their infrastructure to be much more…

  • Automating VxRail with VxRail API Powershell Modules

    For this blog post I wanted to go through some sample use cases for leveraging the VxRail API’s via Powershell Modules. This post is targeted towards users who are familiar with VxRail and are looking to automate some of those tasks that they are already performing today, via the UI.…

  • VxRail Provided vCenter

    VxRail is a VMware vSphere and vSAN HCI appliance. A vCenter is required to manage the cluster or clusters. Customers have a choice of using their own vCenter or the VxRail provided vCenter, this is specified during deployment. VxRail provided vCenter is included at no cost to the customer. If…

  • Dell EMC VxRail Hyperconverged Infrastructure and Kubernetes Your Way

    VxRail is Built for VMware, with VMware, to enhance VMware The level of customer and field interest in understanding the Tanzu portfolio and integration with hyperconverged solutions is at an all time high. With that I felt it’s time to start a multi-part discussion on key topics which I consistently…

  • Hosting a KMS on the encrypted VxRail cluster, with Key Persistence

    In my previous post (VxRail cluster encryption with the vSphere Native Key Provider) I spoke about how to encrypt your VxRail cluster with the vSphere Native Key Provider that was introduced in vSphere 7.0 U2. It is a great feature and the post shows how easy it is to set…

  • VxRail 7.0.13x – Networking Flexibility

    One of the biggest changes we’ve added to the VxRail 7.0 code release is around the networking. In previous VxRail releases, we could only guarantee the Network Daughter Card (NDC) would be installed in the system. That lead us to only configuring the NDC for “System Traffic” (Management, vSAN, vMotion)…

  • VCF on VxRail 4.2 – Walkthrough (Part 2: VI Workload Domain)

    This is the second in a series of posts covering VCF On VxRail 4.2. The following detailed post provides an example walkthrough covering the process of deploying a VI Workload Domain with a second VDS dedicated to NSX-T traffic: Versions used in this example are VCF 4.2 & VxRail 7.0.131.…

  • VxRail Technical Overview – Part 2 CTO Advisor PoC

    Dell Technologies GEOS team member Joe Mauer participated in the CTO Advisor technical analysis of the value of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) on VxRail integration. See more from the CTO Advisor: Dell Technologies VxRail HCI System Software Research – The CTO Advisor

  • VxRail Cluster Encryption with the vSphere Native Key Provider

    VMware has recently introduced the vSphere Native Key Provider (NKP). This is a way to enable data-at-rest protections straight from vSphere itself. Before we talk about the NKP, let’s first go back one step… Using a KMS So far, to encrypt a VxRail (vSAN) cluster, the only option was to…