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Alex Samoylenko
Alex Samoylenko
Virtualization Architect. Alex is a certified VMware vExpert and the Founder of VMC, a company focused on virtualization, and the CEO of Nova Games, a mobile game publisher.
Alex Samoylenko

VMware Horizon View 7.x. configuration backup & recovery

VMware Horizon View is a VMware product that aims to improve the infrastructure of the virtual desktop as well as support bring your own device (BYOD) programs. Most administrators back up virtual desktops, but very few pay enough attention to backing up the Horizon View configurations. At the same time, a backup of a VMware Horizon View environment configuration is a critical part of the work of your virtual desktop infrastructure that guarantees its integrity. Moreover, if you any have problems with a large View Manager configuration that can last from several hours to several days, your Horizon View configurations need a safe harbor badly. So, don’t wait for a second!

Alex Samoylenko

VMware vSphere 6.7 Network I/O Control – getting under the hood

If you are a VMware vSphere administrator who wants to solve the problem of a low network throughput, Network I/O Control (NIOC) is exactly what you need! It’s a traffic-specific vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) mechanism of network bandwidth regulation that was firstly introduced in vSphere 4.1 in 2010. NIOC appeared when 10G networking was increasingly prevalent and became a real breakthrough. With this mechanism, you can ensure high network throughput and go with fewer network adapters in ESXi hosts. That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Alex Samoylenko

Reclaiming guest OS storage in VMware vSAN 6.7 U1 with TRIM/UNMAP process

Everyone knows that modern operating systems write data into the empty blocks but not in the ones that are just marked as deleted. VMware vSAN 6.7 Update 1, TRIM/UNMAP feature to be exact, will help you to easily restore data that marked as deleted. For space-saving concerns, vSAN allows creating thin provisioned disks that grow gradually as they are filled with data.

Alex Samoylenko

Persistent memory in VMware vSphere 6.7: what is it & how fast is it?

Persistent Memory (PMEM) support is introduced in the recently released VMware vSphere 6.7. This new non-volatile memory type covers the gap in performance between the random-access memory (RAM) and Flash/SSD. But, is PMEM really that fast? In this article, I take a closer look at what persistent memory is and its performance.

Alex Samoylenko

How does REST API work in VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation?

VMware introduced REST API in VMware Fusion 10, the desktop virtualization platform for MacOS, back in the last fall. This interface enables to orchestrate not only the virtualization platform itself but also virtual machines running on top of it. Exact the same REST API appeared in the recently released VMware Workstation 2018 Tech Preview. However, there’s a small thing about the API for Workstation: it works only on Windows hosts so far.

Alex Samoylenko

VMware Skyline – Advanced Technical Support for Large Virtualized Environments

For some reason, VMware Skyline is not common knowledge for VMware vSphere admins and VMware products users on the whole. Skyline is VMware proactive support technology allowing to provide advanced technical support for VMware vSphere products (including vSAN 6.6 and later) and VMware NSX. Soon, some other products will be supported. But wait, what is this service actually for? To make that thing clear for everyone, I’d like to shed light on VMware Skyline in this article.

Alex Samoylenko

What should you do if “No space left on device” error occurs while updating VMware ESXi?

While updating VMware ESXi servers, VMware vSphere users may encounter the “No space left on device” error that pops up while executing the “esxcli software vib update” command. Interestingly, the problem occurs even though disks are doing well and have enough free space and df -h command proves that.

Alex Samoylenko

Generating a Support Bundle: How to Retrieve Virtual Infrastructure Logs from VMware vCenter and ESXi Servers

One day, any VMware administrator may require the so-called “support bundle” which contains log-files, diagnostic information, and performance metrics. Taken together, these parameters allow troubleshooting VMware vSphere. The bundle provides VMware GSS (Global Support Services) the insight into virtualized environment configuration which allows them to resolve issues, when a client submits a support ticket with this bundle attached.

Alex Samoylenko

Why should you install the latest VMware vCenter 6.5 Update 1d /1e?

Throughout the last month, VMware has released two important updates for virtual infrastructure management server – VMware vCenter 6.5 Update 1d and 1e. Both updates have significantly improved the functionality of the vCenter management server, despite it’s just one more letter added to Update 1.