We have a corporate web server here at HQ which runs on Server 2012 IIS using classic ASP. On that same server, we have various directories setup as virtual directories for IIS. That way people can access PDFs / PNGs of manufacturing drawings right from our corporate intranet site.

We've had some great success using various Apple and Android tablets for folks to access the company intranet site out in our shops, but viewing the PDF files in mobile browsers has been a pain. There are only a handful of Apple tablets out there. It's more Android tablets than anything (mostly ASUS Nexus 7 2013 and some newer ASUS Zenpads). We're using MaaS360 and their kiosk mode functionality on the Android tablets so shop employees can only access what they need (normally a web browser, corporate e-mail if they need it, a calculator app, and a camera app). It's a pretty minimal set of applications that they need.

Here's what we have found so far regarding viewing PDF files from our intranet site on the tablets:
Apple

• Viewing the PDFs in Safari on iOS devices works wonderfully. But the number of Apple devices out there is pretty minimal (probably only about 5 - 10) compared to the large number of Android tablets (probably more like 35 - 40).

Android

• The Chrome app works great to view any page, but when you try to click a link to a PDF, it will download and fail to open (even with Adobe Reader app installed).

• I tried Firefox with no luck. I cannot even authenticate to our intranet site with it.

• Dolphin and Mercury were much the same as Chrome

• I finally stumbled upon Opera. It will prompt you to download the PDF, and then you can go back to your download list in the browser and open it in a PDF viewer without any trouble. While this seems like a workable option, I don't like the idea of people out on the floor having to download the file, open the downloads page, and then opening the file. They may end up getting confused about which files to open if there are many downloaded without clearing the list occasionally.

Does anyone know of something other than Opera that might do the trick for a mobile browser we can use to view these PDFs on Android tablets? I'd prefer a browser app that will render the PDF files in the browser (no requirement to download a file and then go open it).

I thought maybe it was our office's DNS resolution, but it's taking several minutes to load a page in the Spiceworks community on my phone's 4G LTE connection as well, if it loads at all. I just noticed in the last 15 minutes or so. Is anyone else seeing this?

It all depends on the RTO you need to hit. But to the points being made here, the RTO may be different depending on the applications in your environment. Maybe the ERP system and its SQL database are all that need to come back within 1 hour of going down but the file server's RTO could be closer to 2 or 3 hours.

We talk about RTO and RPO, but I bet you in most places those are not clearly defined down to the VM / application level. If they are and you've planned accordingly, bravo.

@Tim_G said in Vendor Mistake - VMware Infrastructure Decisions:

Honestly, I would return EVERYTHING.

Then I would sit down and design it the right way, using a few R730xd servers, with appropriate specs to accommodate your needs. With that and Starwind vSAN, you can get your HA.

Do you actually need HA? Does the company feel spending the money for real HA is a business requirement and makes financial sense?

If I were commenting on this post, I would be asking the same thing. In this case, management agrees HA is a business requirement (not buying a feature that is touted as HA but actually implementing HA for our workloads).

Here's the latest:We had been doing some testing with Infinio while waiting for the SSD from Dell using diskspd inside a VM that had VMDKs on multiple datastores that were LUNs on the SAN.  Their read caching works very well if you need something for that purpose.

Dell sent us the 1.6 TB SED SSD mentioned above (not officially a supported configuration), but it actually made the SAN overall slower using our benchmarking tools and would only apply the cache to one of the controllers for whatever reason.  Dell understood and was willing to help us pursue additional options to make it right.

During the process of Dell trying to get us one of those drives that they thought would work in our SAN, I had mentioned we should look at VMware VSAN.  But they were quoting it using exact ready node configurations (dual CPU sockets per node), which would have put us over our vSphere licensed limit for this location (4 sockets) in addition to having to purchase VSAN Standard licenses.  I suggested single socket and 4 hosts.  There are SED options that will work with VSAN, but it really limits you in terms of choices.

As far as the end solution goes, it looks like we'll get bumped to Enterprise Plus in our vSphere licensing to take advantage of VM Encryption as well as getting VSAN Standard for each host for a hybrid config.  That way we can use larger spinning disks in the hosts and let the software handle the encryption.  We will have to have an external KMS which will also be provided as part of the solution.

The only thing to answer now is whether VxRail does the trick or we go with some kind of modified ready node / build your own host for VSAN. The SAN we have now and 2 R630 hosts plus two of the 10 GB PowerConnect switches will go back to Dell to exchange.

Starwind was a consideration, but it did not seem as easy to manage and maintain as VSAN for a 4-node configuration to get the storage capacity needed.

If you missed it yesterday there was a product announcement for VSAN 6.6 (part of the latest express patch for ESXi 6.5). Here's the on-demand webinar if you want to learn about the new features - https://vts.inxpo.com/Launch/Event.htm?ShowKey=38595. There are also some great resources here - https://storagehub.vmware.com/#!/vmware-vsan/learn-and-evaluate.

Did anyone else aside from me watch the webinar?  If so, what did you think?

After many conversations between my boss and his Dell team, here's what we're getting (as of early next week):

• Upgrade to vSphere Enterprise Plus and vSAN Standard for 6 sockets
• Four Dell R730s with single socket Xeon procs and 10 drives each (8 10K SAS 1.2 TB non-SED HDDs, 2 SSDs) for two vSAN disk groups per host, running ESXi on mirrored SD cards
• Hytrust for KMS (to be used with VM Encryption) with support paid for by Dell

Here's what we are returning:

• Dell PowerVault MD 3820, all SAS SEDs in it, all SSDs that were originally for caching
• Two PowerEdge R630 servers with dual socket Xeon processors and no internal drives
• Two PowerConnect N4032 switches that were slated for connectivity to the SAN only
  We will be keeping 2 of the PowerConnects we originally ordered to stack and use for the VSAN cluster here at HQ.

We originally had vSphere Standard and vCenter Standard for 6 sockets (4 sockets for here at HQ and 2 sockets for the DR site). Those 6 sockets will still be spread as 4 at HQ and 2 at the DR site, making a 4-node vSAN cluster at HQ and a 2-node cluster at the DR site with witness). We're keeping the AppAssure appliance as well.

So with the vSAN 6.6 release just this week, it means we will be on the bleeding edge once everything is configured. The setup would probably make a great series of blogs assuming I have the time to write them.

Thanks to everyone here for the help and advice. I'm excited to play with the new toys!

I really like Gliffy for flowcharts.

There's an entire Ready Node selector here on VMware' site - http://vsanreadynode.vmware.com/RN/RN. One thing we learned is that you can go single-socket with the hosts to save on vSphere and vSAN licenses. Just beef up memory because there will be some overhead for vSAN traffic that folks seem to overlook. I know we did.

I think it's really time to try and quantify the business impact of losing a host or the storage array attached to the host. What would it cost the company if a host tanked? How much of what was on that host could you restore in a reasonable amount of time (whatever your RTO is), and how much of it would not be able to go anywhere because of lack of space?

Could you at least jot down the VMs on each host and their respective roles to show your boss? Then explain what happens when a host dies. Then drive the point home that nothing we have is under warranty, which means we're looking at eBay or scrambling to band aid something to get the host / its array working again. That will likely delay recovery time. There is value in running vendor supported hardware.

If you're really concerned about budget, you could start researching gear pricing on your own from somewhere like XByte at a fraction of the cost of new gear. And they will warranty it for you for years to come. Just make sure it is on VMware's HCL, of course. You could price out new gear as well as the refurb gear from Xbyte and then throw in the refurb gear if something new is shot down due to cost.

But, none of that matters if you don't have some idea of how to quantify that downtime in terms of business impact and dollars. The powers that be may not see the value without some rough numbers.

The Dell PowerConnect N4032 series are quite good in my opinion. They are 10GbE with 40 Gbps stacking cables and are used for a vSAN cluster backbone. They are the first brand of switch I have ever stacked (never had budget to get switches this nice before).

I'd also make sure if you're passing network connection through a phone to a computer, make sure you have gigabit passthrough and not 10/100. It's worth the slight extra cost if you're looking to avoid dropping another ethernet jack in each person's cube.

And don't inspect SIP traffic, turn off SIP-ALG, etc. Many times that leads to one-way audio and heartache.

After hearing the session on open source security tools at Spiceworld, I am going to give Wazuh a shot and do a POC of it vs. OSSEC. From what I have read, Wazuh is essentially OSSEC on steroids.

@dave247 said in Trouble converting an OVF to VMDK using MVMC...:

@scottalanmiller said in Trouble converting an OVF to VMDK using MVMC...:

@dave247 said in Trouble converting an OVF to VMDK using MVMC...:

@dustinb3403 said in Trouble converting an OVF to VMDK using MVMC...:

I'm confused why your UTM device would even know or care what hypervisor it may or may not be on.

Have you tried using it, on your ESXi 6.5 system?

The appliance is downloadable in OVF which is for VMware. It is not compatible on 6.5 and displays errors, which is why I called support and that's when they told me it only works on up to 6.

Oh, is this an older UTM that they aren't supporting any longer? Do they have a current version?

hahaha.. No. They (SonicWall) said 6.5 will eventually be supported.

That's insane. vSphere 6.5 has been out for over a year, and they can't support it yet? This kind of stuff bothers me about vendors.

I was talking with someone the other day who had moved a bunch of VMs from a vSphere 5.0 cluster host to a fresh vSphere 6.5U1 cluster. There were some Linux VMs that were not supported on 6.5 per the 3rd party vendor and would have required a tremendous effort to update the 3rd party software running in the Linux VMs. So they ended up being left on the 5.0 cluster for now. It's not exactly the same as your situation here, but it was equally frustrating to hear.

@dafyre said in Getting rid of Group text as a means of calling out.:

There's always email, lol.

Why not create a PTO calendar and have folks put their PTO days on it? It could even be a resource mailbox. So send a meeting to the mailbox and all members of the team that need to know. Historical tracking of any and all PTO can be done by checking the resource mailbox's calendar. Simple.

I'm looking for a decent way to provide wifi to the entire house. At the moment, we have a router in the living room running DD-WRT that bridges wirelessly to an office across the house so we can have wired connections for desktops, etc. in the office. That seems to cover everything in a 1-story home pretty well.

Suppose we now consider a 2-story home. I am a little concerned that my DD-WRT setup won't quite cut it for servicing both floors plus the office (downstairs). I'm a big fan of Unifi but don't want to run a controller on a computer at the house. That would be where a cloud key comes into play. I would think 2 APs max should do the trick. I would also want the capability to wire in a desktop in the office downstairs and a TV upstairs. I'm ok with doing those using bridging if it works but may have to have cabling done for best experience.

I heard about Netgear Orbi this week. I am liking the parental controls and the per-app filtering. It's certainly the more expensive solution here compared to Unifi. Is anyone using an Orbi today that can comment on how valuable it has been from a filtering standpoint to keep the bad stuff out of our kids' eyes and ears?

You would need to either roll back to 6.5U1 or wait for 6.7U1. I have done an accidental unsupported back-in-time upgrade like that before, and it caused me some major pain (documented here).

This may be an option for you to roll back. How many hosts are we talking, and when did they get upgraded to 6.5U2?

Here's a KB that matches the virtual machine hardware versions with product versions like you see when you try to create a VM - https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1003746.

Here's a list of capabilities that match to different virtual machine hardware versions - https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc/GUID-789C3913-1053-4850-A0F0-E29C3D32B6DA.html.

So if you created a VM that was compatible with 6.7U2, it could not run on a host running any version of ESXi older than 6.7U2. In your case that won't be a problem since you are just getting started, but it is something to keep in mind if you build an environment with hosts on newer versions of ESXi later and want to move things around. Keep the VM hardware version at the right level for max flexibility / compatibility in the environment.