Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

The software provides the ability to configure the entirety of a user’s profile at scale. It’s designated for cloud desktops, physical desktops, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) with VMware Horizon, and remote desktop services (RDS). You can configure the entirety of the user’s experience as well as the desired relevant OS settings.

There is a huge list of servers one could use as backup targets. So much so, that there isn’t really one right option. It depends on an organization’s requirements, wants, and needs. However, like with many things in life, there’s always a go-to scenario. We’ve distilled the necessary tips and configurations for your reading pleasure in a short form.

Although Microsoft continues to increase its Windows Server and Azure presence, most businesses still prefer a hybrid environment. Managing a hybrid cloud is more complicated, as you also need to operationalize your on-premises IT environment at scale. Here is where System Center comes into play, along with its new functionality.

In addition to using Azure Portal, there is also the ability to migrate desired resources using CLI (command-line interface). This way, you can bypass the long waiting time for the Portal to perform validation and then enact the move. Instead, you can type in certain commands and start moving resources to another group, subscription, or region right away.

VMware Imager allows automating the process of building Windows 10 virtual machines. Instead of setting up a Golden VM image, you can choose the desired features in Imager and set off the pipeline. This eases the admin routine, reducing reliance on a specific task and human errors. You can stop the process at any stage and tweak stuff, too.

With NVMe SSDs quickly erupting as the desired storage standard, common RAID technology isn’t able to provide any longer. StarWind, being ahead of IT infrastructure trends, has already solved this bottleneck. Empowered with GRAID  SupremeRAID™, the world’s first NVMe-oF RAID card, and StarWind SAN&NAS SDS, StarWind Backup Appliance unleashes the entire potential of NVMe for both backup performance and backup data security.

SexiGraph is open-source community-based software for monitoring vSphere, including V7 U3, vSAN and its APIs. The project leverages a Grafana frontend and is very fast at providing all kinds of vSphere-related data in an appealing visual format. Definitely worth checking out if you want VMware environment data quick and easy on the eyes.

VMware Dynamic Environment Manager (DEM) is used to manage profile settings for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) users. The tool is designed for VMware Horizon and has a wide range of functions, among which there’s a handy ability to retain customizations and files of a user in their VD profile while storing them in a File Server.

Azure Data Explorer is a powerful software for real-time analysis of large volumes of streamed data. However, it can be used for data storage as well, and it’s cheaper than Microsoft Sentinel. Additionally, the service is useful if you want to query logs with Kusto Query Language (KQL), which is also available for Azure Log Analytics.