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Andrea Mauro
Andrea Mauro
Virtualization expert and architect, System Administrator on Linux and Windows OS, network and storage specialist. Holding multiple technical certifications from VMware: (VCDX3, VCDX4, VCDX5-DCV, VCAP4-DCA, VCAP4-DCD, VCAP5-DCA, VCAP5-DCD, VCAP6-DCD, VCAP5-DTD, VCAP5-DTA, VCAP5-CIA, VCAP5-CID, VCIX-NV, VCIX6-DCV,VCP3, VCP4, VCP5-DCV, VCA4-DT, VCP4-DT, VCP5-DT, VCP6-NV, VCP5-Cloud), Microsoft (MCP, MCSA, MCSE, MCTS, MCITP), Citrix (CCA, CCSP). VMware vExpert from 2010 to 2016, Microsoft MVP 2014-16 (on Hyper-V), Veeam Vanguard 2015-2016.
Andrea Mauro
  • Andrea Mauro
  • March 13, 2018

CLI vs. GUI for VMware Admins

The term User Interface (UI) is used for specifying how a user interacts with a specific device, or software. CLI and GUI are two different types of possible user interfaces. Let’s analyze those different approaches and the pro and cons of them, using the VMware vSphere environment as an example.
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Andrea Mauro
  • Andrea Mauro
  • January 31, 2018

Why upgrade to VMware vSphere 6.5 (or why not)

VMware vSphere 6.5 is the latest version of the enterprise server virtual platform from VMware, but the new beta it’s already there for testers. Actually the next version it’s (in the beta). If you are building a new infrastructure from scratch the latest stable version is probably the best choices (for most cases); but what about if you have an old environment and you plan to upgrade it?
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Andrea Mauro
  • Andrea Mauro
  • October 10, 2017

The dark side of converged storage networks

The fabric of SAN (means Storage Area Network) with Fibre Channel solutions have always been a dedicated network, with dedicated components (like FC switches). But, starting with iSCSI and FCoE protocols, the storage fabric could now be shared with the traditional network infrastructure, because at least level 1 and 2 have a common Ethernet layer (for iSCSI also layer 3 and 4 are the same of TCP/IP networks). Hosts (the initiators) in a converged network use typically Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) that provide both Ethernet and storage functions (usually FCoE and iSCSI).
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Andrea Mauro
  • Andrea Mauro
  • June 7, 2017

Design a ROBO infrastructure. Part 4: HCI solutions

As written in the previous post, for ROBO scenario the most interesting HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure) configuration is a two nodes configuration, considering that two nodes could be enough to run dozen VMs (or also more). For this reason, not all hyperconverged solutions could be suitable for this case (for example Nutanix or Simplivity need at least 3 nodes). And is not simple scale down an enterprise solution to a small size, due to the architecture constraints.
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Andrea Mauro
  • Andrea Mauro
  • March 30, 2017

Design a ROBO infrastructure (Part 3): Infrastructure at remote office side

Design a ROBO scenario must match finally the reality of the customers’ needs, its constraints but also the type of workload and the possible availability solutions of them.
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Andrea Mauro
  • Andrea Mauro
  • February 24, 2017

Design a ROBO infrastructure (Part 2): Design areas and technologies

In the previous post, we have explained and described business requirements and constraints in order to support design and implementation decisions suited for mission-critical applications, considering also how risk can affect design decisions.
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Andrea Mauro
  • Andrea Mauro
  • January 25, 2017

Design a ROBO (Part 1): Introduction and high-level design

A Remote Office / Branch Office (ROBO) is an office located in a different site or a remote geographical area from another office (usually the headquarter or the main office). Several organizations have one (or more) main office, as well as remote offices in another city, country or continent. Many organizations today have in each remote office some local IT infrastructure, usually for data locality, but also for service local services.
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