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What is VMware Cloud Foundation?

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VMware Cloud Foundation has recently released 3.5 version, but some of our readers might don’t know What is VMware Cloud Foundation? As we reported in our post during VMworld Barcelona 2018, VMware Cloud Foundation is an integrated software stack, with compute virtualization (VMware vSphere), storage virtualization (VMware vSAN), network virtualization (VMware NSX), and cloud management and monitoring […]

What is NVMe Over Fabrics (NVMe-oF)?

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NVMe SSDs are the fastest storage for consumer laptops for example but exists also as PCIe add-on cards for desktops or servers. Those kind of SSDs are much faster than SATA and SAS SSDs in the data center and will probably replace, sooner or later, the traditional SATA/SAS devices. The storage industry today seeks lower latency and […]

StarWind Latest Update Build and How to Update StarWind Linux Appliance

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StarWind VSAN has a new update which we’ll talk about today, but also we’ll show you that it’s is now dead easy to update existing StarWind appliance running Linux. StarWind continues to progress and packs new features and fixes bugs in every release. I have written about their previous release here which has already brought […]

VMware vCenter Server 6.5 Update 2d adds tool to convert external PSCs into embedded PSCs

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VMware releases another update for vSphere 6.5. This update brings a Command Line tool (CLI) which is able to convert vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) instances with an external Platform Service Controller (PSC) into a VCSA with an embedded PSC connected in Embedded Linked Mode. We’ve talked about Embedded Linked Mode (ELM) in this post. Basically, (vCSA) supports […]

VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) – Manage Firewall Settings

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VMware vSphere 6.7 has introduced a firewall management for the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). The firewall options allow you to create new firewall rules or edit some existing firewall rules. the feature has been introduced in vSphere 6.7 Update 1. We’ll have a look at all those options in this post –  VMware vCenter Server […]

StarWind VVOLS Support and details of integration with VMware vSphere

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As you might notice, StarWind VSAN now supports VMware VVOLS. If you’re new into VMware VVOLS, you should perhaps check some VMware documentation, or we have an article about storage and  VMware VVOLS as well. Virtual volumes are object exported by a compliant storage system. vVOLs correspond one-to-one with a VMs disk and other VM related files. […]

What is VMware UNMAP? – Dead Space Reclamation

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I’ve had a couple of questions concerning UNMAP and dead space reclamation, in VMware vSphere. We know this also as “TRIM” on Windows and other systems. While in the past, the mechanism of space reclamation was able to reclaim dead space from a thinly provisioned array, but also from thin provisioned VMs (or rather their VMDKs), […]

What Is Log-Structured Write Cache?

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Log-Structured Write Cache (LWC) is composed of RAM but also small SSD pool. This way, an application with random writes, can have optimal performance, compared to a cache using RAM only. But it is also more secure as logs are written to SSD tier and replicated to other nodes within the cluster. StarWind VSAN uses LWC […]

StarWind V2V Converter is Now also P2V

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StarWind has updated their free software called StarWind V2V Converter. The software has been around for a long time, but every release gets better. This time the tool can now even do a physical conversion into virtual (P2V). So, for example, you can convert physical Windows Server host into a virtual machine running on VMware […]