Author Archives: Hugo Phan

How to import existing infrastructure into Terraform management

This post will focus on how to import existing infrastructure into Terraform’s management. Some scenarios where this could happen is that you’ve already deployed infrastructure and have only recently started to look into infrastructure as code and maybe you’ve tried to use PowerShell, Ansible and other tools but none are quite as declarative as Terraform.

Reducing HCX on-premises appliances resources

When HCX is deployed there are three appliances that are deployed as part of the Service Mesh. If you’re running testing or deploying these in a nested lab, the resource requirements may be too high for your infrastructure. This post shows you how you can edit the OVF appliances to be deployed with lower resource requirements.

Upgrade Cloud Director to 10.2

A very quick post on how to upgrade your Cloud Director cluster to 10.2. This post contains some shortcuts that removes some repetitive steps. Download the latest Cloud Director 10.2 from my.vmware.com. You can read more about the latest updates in the release notes. Primarily, VCD 10.2 brings some very new functionality, including: NSX-T AdvancedContinue reading “Upgrade Cloud Director to 10.2”

Protecting Cloud Director with NSX-T Load Balancer L7 HTTP Policies

Running Cloud Director (formerly vCloud Director) over the Internet has its benefits however opens up the portal to security risks. To prevent this, we can use the native load balancing capabilities of NSX-T to serve only HTTP access to the URIs that are required and preventing access to unnecessary URIs from the rest of the Internet.

VMworld 2019 Rewatch: Building a Modern Cloud Hosting Platform on VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware vCloud Director (HBI1321BE)

Rewatch my session with Onni Rautanen at VMworld EMEA 2019 where we cover the clouds that we are building together with Tieto.

Load Balancing and Protecting Cloud Director with Avi Networks

This article covers protecting and load balancing the Cloud Director application with Avi Networks. It covers SSL termination. health monitoring and layer 7 HTTP filtering. It can also be used as a reference for other load balancer products such as F5 LTM or NGINX.

How to deploy vCloud Director Appliance with Terraform and govc

Recently I’ve been looking at a tool to automate the provisioning of the vCloud Director appliance. I wanted something that could quickly take JSON as input for the OVF properties and be able to consistently deploy the appliance with the same outcome. I tried Terraform, however that didn’t quite work out as I expected asContinue reading “How to deploy vCloud Director Appliance with Terraform and govc”

Securing VMware Cloud on AWS remote access to your SDDC with an SSL VPN

Not all customers want to setup site-to-site VPNs using IPSEC or Route-based VPNs between their on-premises data centre to an SDDC on VMware Cloud on AWS. Using a client VPN such as an SSL VPN to enable a client-side device to setup an SSL VPN tunnel to the SDDC.

Atlantis USX 3.5 – What’s New?

I’m excited to announce the latest enhancements to the Atlantis USX product following the release of Atlantis USX 3.5. Before we delve too deep in what’s new in USX 3.5, let’s take a brief recap on some of the innovative features from our previous releases. We delivered USX 2.2 back in February 2015 where weContinue reading “Atlantis USX 3.5 – What’s New?”

Deduplication – By the Numbers

Atlantis HyperScale appliances come with effective capacities of 12TB, 24TB and 48TB depending on the model that is deployed. These capacities are what we refer to as effective capacity, i.e., the available capacity after in-line de-duplication that occurs when data is stored onto HyperScale Volumes. HyperScale Volumes always de-duplicate data first before writing data downContinue reading “Deduplication – By the Numbers”

Introducing Atlantis HyperScale

What is it? A hyper-converged appliance running pre-installed USX software on either XenServer or VMware vSphere and on the hardware of your choice – Lenovo, HP, SuperMicro and Cisco. How is it installed? HyperScale comes pre-installed by Atlantis Channel Partners. HyperScale runs exactly the same software as USX, however HyperScale is installed automatically from USBContinue reading “Introducing Atlantis HyperScale”

USX 2.1 Whats New?

USX 2.1 is now available and has some minor improvements over previous versions. There are some major milestones and some minor improvements that are part of this release. Major milestones: VMware support for USX on the VMware HCL, the VMware KB is in this link. VMware support for Atlantis NAS VAAI Plugin, the VMware Compatibility Guide forContinue reading “USX 2.1 Whats New?”

Coming to VMworld US? Get yourself a VVOL compliant all software storage array

This article details all of my and Atlantis’ activities at VMworld US. Read more to get an introduction of what we will be doing and announcing and a sneak peek at our upcoming technology roadmap that solves some of the major business issues concerning performance, capacity and availability today. It is indeed going to beContinue reading “Coming to VMworld US? Get yourself a VVOL compliant all software storage array”

Is Atlantis USX the future of Software Defined Storage?

Originally posted on StorageSwiss.com – The Home of Storage Switzerland:
Software Defined Storage (SDS) has certainly caught the attention of IT planners looking to reduce the cost of storage by liberating them from traditional storage hardware lock-in. As SDS evolves the promise of lower storage CAPEX, increased deployment and architecture flexibility, paired with lower…

Virtual Volumes – Explained with Carousels, Horses and Unicorns – in pictures

Originally posted on VMwire:
[Tongue in cheek. There’s no World Cup on today so I made this. Please don’t take this too seriously.] A SAN is like a carousel It provides capacity (just like a carousel) and performance (when the carousel goes around). People ride on static horses bolted to the carousel and try to enjoy the…