Today I release a special Christmas gift for you. For some time, I’m writing a PowerShell script to generate a Storage Spaces Direct dashboard. This dashboard enables you to validate each important setting for a S2D cluster. I decided to write this PowerShell script to avoid to run hundred of PowerShell cmdlet and check manually returned value. With this dashboard, ...
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This week I deployed a Nutanix cluster based on VMware ESXi 6.5u1. I wanted to share with you how to re-image the Nutanix nodes to VMware ESXi. Usually Nutanix blocks are shipped with nodes imaged on AHV. So, you have to re-image the Nutanix nodes to the wanted hypervisor (Hyper-V, ESXi or KVM). In this topic we’ll see how to ...
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Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) is the Microsoft Software-Defined Storage solution. Thanks to S2D, we can deploy hyperconverged infrastructure based on Microsoft technologies such as Hyper-V. This feature is included in Windows Server 2016 Datacenter edition. You can find a lot of blog posts about S2D on this website. In this topic, I’ll talk about how to monitor S2D. S2D is ...
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This week I worked for a customer which had issue with his Storage Spaces Direct cluster (S2D). When he restarted a node, Windows Server didn’t start and a bluescreen appeared. It is because the operating system disks were plugged on S130 while Storage Spaces Direct devices were connected to HBA330mini. It is an unsupported configuration especially with Dell R730XD. In ...
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Usually, I’m not speaking about news but only about technical details. But with the release of Windows Server 2016 1709, lot of misinformation have been written and I’d like to show another way to look at this. First of all, it is important to understand what happened to Windows Server 2016. Microsoft has modified how Windows Server is distributed to ...
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When you deploy a backup solution such as Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5, this tool becomes your body guard. In case of general failure, the backup tool must run to restore your servers and data. In some case, Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 can fail with the production and actually the first machine to restore is Veeam. It provides a ...
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Earlier in the week, I published a blog post about Honolulu project and how in the future, this tool can ease Windows Server management. Today I introduce another management tool for Storage Spaces Direct (hyperconverged or disaggregated). This tool is called StarWind Manager and it is developed by … StarWind. StarWind Manager is currently in preview version and for the ...
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Since the beginning of the year, Microsoft is working on a new management tool based on modern web languages such as HTML5, Angular and so on. This tool is called Honolulu. Honolulu is a user-friendly web interface that enables to manage Windows Server, Failover Clustering and Hyperconverged cluster. Currently, to manage hyperconverged cluster, Honolulu requires Semi-Annual Windows Server release. Honolulu ...
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If you are using vCSA 6.x, maybe you want to replace the self-signed certificate by a certificate signed with your enterprise to avoid security alert in browser. Active Directory Certificate Services is an enterprise PKI and in this topic, I’ll show you how to replace vCSA 6.5u1 certificate by a custom certificate. By replacing the certificate, your browser will not ...
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Like the others, Mellanox network adapters should be updated to the latest firmware to solve issues. When you download the Mellanox firmware release note, you can see how much reported issues have been solved (usually, a lot :)). Mellanox provides tools to update and manage the firmware from Linux, Freebsd, VMware ESXi, Windows and Windows PE. Thanks to this set ...
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