Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

Recently, I decided to automate some boring routine procedures related to setting up virtual networks in ESXi 6.5. That’s right, I’m talking about PowerCLI. This command-line tools allows automating all aspects of vSphere management, including network, storage, VM and so on and so forth. Sure, I had to dig into the details of orchestrating ESXi with PowerCLI. Yep, it took me some time but at the end of the day, the knowledge and experience I acquired paid back! Apparently, this case is not unique, so I decided to share my experience in today’s scribbling.

PowerShell is a command line (CLI) scripting language developed by Microsoft to simplify automation and configuration management, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language. It’s a (huge) evolution (or better a revolution) from the original DOS batch language (still supported in latest Windows OS with the cmd.exe command), and it’s really better compared to the different previous attempts to replace the batch language (like Windows Script Host).

We live in an age where our technology needs are ever evolving. Right now we may need things we didn’t even know existed until a few weeks back because every little feature or upgrade brings massive value into our everyday lives. The same is the case with the preview release of Microsoft  Windows Server 2019. Let’s take a closer peek at what features Microsoft has in store to serve our evolving needs with its new release.

The RDMA wars in regards to SMB Direct: RoCE versus iWarp.

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.

The Flavors of RDMA & what role DCB plays.

For that matter, I’ll create a file server of two types: “File server for general use” and Scale-Out File Server. For the latter, I’ll have two scenarios: VMs running and off. After that, I’m gonna evaluate the deduplication ratio using a free tool – StarWind Deduplication Analyzer. And finally, run data deduplication using the Windows Server 2016 Data Deduplication feature. We also need our storage shared, so for this purpose, I’ve decided on StarWind Virtual SAN Free.

What is RDMA and why do we like it.

Now that you deploy Cloudyn (see the other article), we will connect our AWS environment to have only one interface, to manage cost for all our cloud provider subscription. Be careful, from June, this interface will not be free anymore for AWS. It’ll cost you 1% of your annual subscription consumption.