VMware Virtual Machine Virtual Disk Security

Last week, during VMworld 2016 Europe, VMware announces the latest release of vSphere 6.5. You can check this, amongst other things being announced, on this press release. One area of improvement for vSphere 6.5 is in virtual infrastructure security which you can read here. What interests me related to the new security features is VM encryption, as some customers which I met asked about this capability. So I dug out an old post which originally was a personal notes I wrote back in 2014 about some points of discussion regarding virtual disk security, and modify it to be relevant with the recent announcement. 

OK, let's understand the problem first. Remember one of the characteristic of virtualisation? Encapsulation. In other word, VM basically is only a set of files. If those files happened to be walked out the door, then people can mount it up, extract the files/information, or even have the VM up and running. Check this article if you want to get the idea on how that could be done.

You might say that if that situation happened, that means that company not applying a good security policy, and if that is the case, anything can happened, even in non virtualise world. Well you got that right, but let's see what we can do to prevent that situation, how VMware able to cater this situation, how VMware can make sure that if virtual disk leakage happened, the person who have it could not take advantage from it.

[lunar.lab] Build My Lab Network Using VyOS

Am trying to build my own lab. The idea is to have three "virtual datacenter" as described in the following figure. Datacenter A and datacenter B would be two independent datacenter, where later I can simulate DR failover, workload mobility, stretch network, etc across those two datacenter.  Each datacenter will have their own ESXi hosts and vCenter. Datacenter C is where I keep shared services which are required by either datacenter A or B, but not relevant to the test that I want to perform. Other than that, datacenter C will hosts some workload which mimic as user accessing workload on datacenter A or B. Each datacenter will have their own router, and dynamic routing should be configured between those 3 datacenter as later I want to explore NSX multi site capabilities. You can see the network and address that I plan to use on the following figure.

Free Technical VMware Online Resources

[Content Updated on 27 December 2017]
[ I decided to home this post to dedicated page, for new updated content please visit this page.

Is there any free resources to learn about VMware technologies? I have seen many people asking this question again and again. Actually there are a lot, and here I try to list down all the free technical VMware resources available on the Internet that I aware of. If you know any other resources, feel free to drop a note on the comment and I will try to consolidate it.

Integrating VMware vSphere with Dell Blade Server Solutions

Di sekitar akhir Agustus 2012 kemarin, saya mengisi sesi demo dalam event yang diadakan kantor dengan tema virtualisasi (baca VMware) dengan sponsor Dell. Untuk itu, Dell menyediakan 3 unit blade server, lengkap dengan enclosure dan modul interconnectnya, dan iSCSI storage Equallogic. Karena sponsornya Dell, tentunya saya harus bisa menunjukkan value dari penggunaan hardware Dell pada solusi virtualisasi dengan VMware. Jadi setelah berdiskusi dengan tim Dell, dan banyak googling, akhirnya saya putuskan untuk mengangkat soal integrasi VMware vSphere dan hardware Dell dengan tiga topik bahasan: server management menggunakan Dell Management Plug-in (DMP) for VMware vCenter, fitur VAAI (vStorage APIs for Array Integration) yang dimiliki Equallogic, dan Equallogic management menggunakan Host Integration Tool – VMware Edition (HIT-VE). Artikel ini akan membahas mengenai DMP yang berguna untuk melakukan management Dell server langsung pada VMware vCenter.

Configuring two-blade SMP on Hitachi Compute Blade 2000

Masih ingat artikel saya mengenai fitur-fitur unik yang dimiliki oleh sistem blade Hitachi Compute Blade 2000? Salah satu fitur unik dari HCB2000 adalah multi-blade SMP (Symmetrical Multi Processing), dimana beberapa individual server dapat digabungkan menjadi satu sehingga diperoleh tambahan kemampuan, di antaranya penambahan jumlah socket processor, jumlah slot DIMM, dan jumlah I/O slot. Video berikut memperlihatkan cara konfigurasi 2-blade SMP untuk menyatukan dua high-performance blade server, dilengkapi dengan performance test, baik sebelum maupun sesudah proses penyatuan.

CPU Management pada fitur LPAR di HCB2000

Di artikel sebelumnya, telah saya ulas mengenai beberapa fitur yang menjadi pembeda bagi sistem Hitachi Compute Blade 2000 (HCB2000), dimana salah satunya adalah fitur Logical Partitioning (LPAR) atau Hitachi Virtualization Manager (HVM). Pada artikel ini, mari kita coba kenali lebih jauh mengenai LPAR/HVM, khususnya mengenai resource (CPU) management yang mencakup CPU allocation, logical processor Group, dan logical processor Share Ratio. Untuk melengkapi artikel ini, berikut adalah video demo mengenai topik yang akan kita bahas.

Hitachi Compute Blade 2000: Bukan Sekedar Sistem Blade Biasa

Ketika mendengar HDS (Hitachi Data Systems) meluncurkan server dalam bentuk sistem blade, yang terlintas dalam benak saya akankah HDS mampu bersaing dengan pemain-pemain lain yang sudah lebih dahulu berkibar di dunia server dan sistem blade. Apakah sistem ini hanya merupakan pelengkap bagi sistem storage HDS untuk memenuhi portfolio dari Converged Data Center Solutions (CDCS) yang sedang dikembangkan berbagai principal IT saat ini. Fitur apa yang ditawarkan oleh sistem blade Hitachi, hal unik yang mampu menjadi pembeda dan bermanfaat bagi penggunanya, yang akan membuat sistem blade Hitachi meraih tempat di pasar sistem blade. Artikel ini mencoba menggambarkan beberapa fitur tersebut dengan berdasarkan pengalaman penulis dalam mengeksplorasi Hitachi Compute Blade 2000.