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With the 8.0 Update 3 release of VMware vSphere, a new anticipated feature was added – an option to configure snapshot autodeletion.
This short article will look at how to use this feature.
Continue reading “VMware vSphere 8.0 Update 3 automated snapshot deletion” 
Free Nutanix exams again? – YES!
About a month ago I wrote about two new Nutanix exams:
Nutanix Certified Associate 6.10 (NCA 6.10). Blueprint guide;
Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI 6.10). Blueprint guide.
Both exams are based on the recently released 6.10 LTS version of AOS.
Today both exams go live and are available to schedule with appointments starting December 10.
The good news is that you can take both exams for free, just register until December 13.
Use those discounts during checkout:
NCA 6.10 Discount Code: NXFRNCA24
NCP-MCI 6.10 Discount Code: NXFRNCP24
Recommended free online courses for preparing:
Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Fundamentals (NHCF) and Enterprise Cloud Administration (ECA).
Let me remind you that on this blog I have two prep guides for both NCA and NCP exams:
Preparing for the Nutanix Certified Associate 6.5 Exam
Preparing for the Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure 6.5 Exam
Both guides are based on version 6.5, but if you use the same documentation and courses based on the new version, and follow the methodology, you will be fine.
Did you know about Veeam Managed Hardened Repository ISO? This is a Rocky-based Linux distro, which is already pre-hardened to comply with DISA STIG requirements. In addition, Veeam Hardened Repository ISO provides simplified installation and management; there is a text-based user interface that includes all the basic features needed to configure OS and use it as a Veeam Repository.
You can get more information about features, requirements, and limitations on the Veeam R&D Forum.
With the build 0.1.17, this ISO left the technical preview state and got the production-ready status, including Veeam Experimental Support, so you can consider putting it to use.
In this article we will look at how to deploy a server, using Veeam Hardened Repository ISO and how to create a hardened repository using this server.
Continue reading “Using Veeam Hardened Repository ISO and creating Hardened Repository”
I encountered a situation where ESXi 7 Update 3g (build 20328353) stopped sending logs to a remote Syslog server. Upon further investigation, it turned out that it also stopped writing logs locally, and the logs in /scratch/log are not updated. Free disk space is not a problem.
During diagnostics, errors were detected in the /var/log/.vmsyslogd.err log:
vmsyslog.main : CRITICAL] Dropping messages due to log stress (qsize = 25000)I did not find adequate KB for version 7 on this topic, there was only KB for version 6.5/6.7 with a mention of this error, where it was written that “the problem has been fixed”.
The esxcli system syslog config get command correctly displays the status of the syslog settings, but esxcli system syslog reload does not lead to positive results, logs do not start to be written locally, and are not sent to the remote server.
Restarting the service from the host management interface with the Restart button also does not lead to any results. In the log, you can only see:
vmsyslog.main : ERROR ] reloading (3200395)Which is similar to the result of esxcli system syslog reload.
Stopping and restarting the service from the ESXi interface fails because:
This service with 'vmsyslogd' is marked as 'required' and cannot be stopped.All that remains is to stop it forcibly directly from the host:
ps -cC | grep vmsyslog
3418096 3418096 vmsyslogd /bin/python /usr/lib/vmware/vmsyslog/bin/vmsyslogd.pyc 1We determine the PID of vmsyslog, in this case 3418096, and kill it:
kill -9 3418096The vmsyslog will show that the process was killed and then automatically restarted:
vmsyslog.main : ERROR ] Watchdog 3418095 fired (child 3418096 died with status 9)!
vmsyslog.main : ERROR ] Watchdog 3418095 exiting
vmsyslog : CRITICAL] vmsyslogd daemon starting (3418940)After restarting, logs start to be written locally and sent to the remote server.
Great news from Nutanix University!
Two new beta exams are available for scheduling:
Nutanix Certified Associate 6.10 (NCA 6.10) Beta exam. Blueprint guide;
Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI 6.10) Beta exam. Blueprint guide.
Both exams are based on the recently released 6.10 LTS version of AOS.
If you don’t know, Nutanix offers beta exams for free, and the first 250 participants can take the exam at no charge! Just use those discounts during checkout:
NCA 6.10 Beta Exam Discount Code: NCA610BETA
NCP-MCI 6.10 Beta Exam Discount Code: NCPMCI610BETA
The main difference between a beta exam and a regular one is that the beta exam is larger. It includes more questions and you need more time to complete it. The time limit for NCA 6.10 beta is 120 minutes and for NCP-MCI 6.10 beta is 180 minutes.
The deadline is November 3, and this is the last day to test.
Also, one thing to mention, is that you will not get your results immediately! Usually, it can take two or even three months after the deadline, so be patient.
Recommended free online courses for preparing:
Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Fundamentals (NHCF) and Enterprise Cloud Administration (ECA).
Let me remind you that on this blog I have two prep guides for both NCA and NCP exams:
Preparing for the Nutanix Certified Associate 6.5 Exam
Preparing for the Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure 6.5 Exam
Both guides are based on version 6.5, but if you use the same documentation and courses based on the new version, you will be fine.
Categories (in other systems they can be called labels or tags) are used to group entities based on a key-value pairing. For example, we can group a set of VMs and mark them as production environments and apply some policies, while another part of VMs will be marked as tests with a different type of policy applied.
With the release of Veeam Backup 12.2 and the added Prism Central integration, VBR is now aware of Prism Central Categories and can back up all VMs under the specified category in a backup job.
In this article, we will look at how to create a category in Prism Central, how to attach it to the VM, and, sure, how to use VBR with categories.
Continue reading “Using Nutanix Prism Central Categories with Veeam Backup 12.2”
With the release of 12.2, Veeam introduced a new long-awaited feature: Nutanix Prism Central integration, which simplifies the management of large Nutanix clusters, managed by Prism Central instance.
In this article, we will look at how to connect the VBR Server to the Prism Central Instance and perform backup and recovery tasks.
Continue reading “Veeam Backup 12.2 and Nutanix Prism Central integration”
Sometimes deploying Prism Central using an Internet connection is not an option, or a specific version may not be available. In this case, we can download PC deployment files from the Support Portal and deploy it using the Prism Central 1-click deploy from Prism Element method.
In this article, we will look at how to deploy a PC using an offline bundle.
Continue reading “Deploying Prism Central on Nutanix Community Edition 2.1 using offline bundle”
When I look at the virtualization platform, I look not only at the functionality but also at the ecosystem, including backups. When Veeam released version 12.2, where Proxmox support was added, I decided that it was time to learn this platform for a bit.
Previously I didn’t have experience with PVE, and this post is my journey on deploying this virtualization platform for lab purposes.
I considered writing a series of posts but later decided to put all the content into one large post.
In this post, I will cover how to deploy PVE nodes, create a 3-node cluster, connect shared storage, create a VM, and enable high availability.
Continue reading “Deploying the Proxmox Virtual Environment 8 on VMware vSphere for lab purposes”
A new Veeam release brings us a lot of new features including:
You can check the Release Notes for VBR here and for VeeamONE here.
