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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
  • Alex Samoylenko
  • July 18, 2019

Testing VMware VSAN cluster performance with HCIBench: How you do that?

It is not enough to build a functioning hyperconverged infrastructure because any IT environment needs to be constantly in check. Testing cluster performance is a necessity that requires the most serious approach. Hot news for VMware vSAN users is that they do not have to spend all that time and effort anymore since this efficient utility allows automating testing process carried out with such benchmark tools as VDbench or Fio.
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Alex Samoylenko
  • Alex Samoylenko
  • May 8, 2019

VMware pioneers Service-defined Firewall – The game changer in the world of security?

VMware is not a newbie in IT security sport. Their work presents an impressive portfolio, with such solutions as AppDefense, vRealize Network Insight, and NSX-T/NSX-V. In March 2019, VMware introduced the first Service-defined Firewall, their endgame. Take a closer look under the hood to find out how it came to be a real game changer in the world of virtualized environment security.
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Alex Samoylenko
  • Alex Samoylenko
  • February 19, 2019

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!
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Alex Samoylenko
  • Alex Samoylenko
  • December 18, 2018

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?
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Alex Samoylenko
  • Alex Samoylenko
  • October 23, 2018

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.
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Alex Samoylenko
  • Alex Samoylenko
  • August 28, 2018

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.
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Alex Samoylenko
  • Alex Samoylenko
  • July 20, 2018

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.
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Alex Samoylenko
  • Alex Samoylenko
  • June 28, 2018

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.
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Alex Samoylenko
  • Alex Samoylenko
  • April 19, 2018

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.
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