Monthly Archives: November 2015

BC-ESXi, vCenter Appliance & Web Client

This entry is part 12 of 12 in the series Binsfeldius Cluster (ESXi6.0)

<rant> VMWare has been pushing away from a fat client towards their new webclient. The thing is that I remember from version 5 and 5.5 that, although the graphics and look’n’feel are cool, the software is sloooooooow. Unbearable slooooooow. Login … Continue reading

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BC-ESXi, First configuration steps on each node – using vSphere Client

This entry is part 11 of 12 in the series Binsfeldius Cluster (ESXi6.0)

As the basic network connectivity is finished, we can now leave the local configuration in the serverroom and continue from the comfort of a desk and iMac. For this I’ll use the VMWare fat client. (yes yes, I can use … Continue reading

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BC-ESXi – Installing VMWare ESXi 6.0 to iSCSI Boot LUN

This entry is part 9 of 12 in the series Binsfeldius Cluster (ESXi6.0)

There are several ways of installing ESXi 6.0 on a node: burn the installer iso to a bootable disc create an installable USB stick (using unetbootin) As I have a lot of empty discs collecting dust, I opt for burning … Continue reading

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BC-ESXi, the storage design

This entry is part 10 of 12 in the series Binsfeldius Cluster (ESXi6.0)

I’ve already talked a bit about LUN’s and storage. Let’s put everything together. I’m using a QNAP TVS-871 (28Tb raw storage) to be the iSCSI target and provide the mapped LUN’s. The QNAP is configured as 2-disk RAID1, 5-disk RAID5 … Continue reading

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BC-ESXi, preparing a node

This entry is part 8 of 12 in the series Binsfeldius Cluster (ESXi6.0)

The process of updating the BIOS and firmware remains the same therefore I have only changed the iSCSI part below and copied the first part from my earlier post. Now that the node is assembled and hardware ready, it’s time … Continue reading

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BC-ESXi, the network design

This entry is part 7 of 12 in the series Binsfeldius Cluster (ESXi6.0)

The network design has changed to allow for a more fine-grained placement of VM’s and to incorporate a better segmented level of security. VM’s can now be placed into firewalled VLAN’s from vCenter itself. As each node has three physical … Continue reading

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