Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

#130 – John Nicholson introducing the VCF Readiness Assessment Tool

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Recently I noticed a brand new tool was released called the VCF Readiness Assessment Tool, so I decided to reach out to the developer. Fortunately that developer was none other than John Nicholson, and he is always happy to talk tech! Most of you know him as the co-host of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, but as mentioned, going forward he should be known as the creator of the ⁠VCF Readiness Assessment Tool⁠. The Tool is available for free on ⁠Github⁠, and John also produced a series of ⁠videos⁠ demonstrating the various capabilities. Make sure to check those out. John even demoed the capabilities while we recorded the podcast, so if you want to see that make sure to head over to my ⁠Youtube channel⁠! Of course you can find the episode on Apple and Spotify as well.

#129 – Enhanced Compression, QLC, vSAN over FC, and much more! Featuring Anoop Gunturi

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In Episode 129, Anoop Gunturi, vSAN Platform PM, joins me to explore how the vSAN roadmap focuses on lowering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for the VCF platform. We dive into Enhanced Compression, QLC support for various workloads, vSAN over Fibre Channel, and various key architectural updates designed to optimize storage efficiency! This is a must-listen episode.

The episode can be listened to via the embedded player below, and of course on Apple, Spotify, Youtube, etc.

DISCLAIMER: This discussion outlines our general product direction and is for informational purposes only. It contains our current intentions, but is not a binding commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any specific feature, code, or functionality by any set date or version. Development, releases, and timing remain entirely at our discretion and may change based on business needs, feedback, or technical feasibility. Do not rely on this roadmap when making purchasing or investment decisions.

 

#128 – Live from ITQon, announcing the ITQ Cloud Platform, and sharing stories from the VCF trenches!

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I was invited to present a session at ITQon last month, and I decided to bring my portable podcast recording gear to record a few clips with various people from ITQ. As most of the attendees work with VMware solutions and services on a daily basis, I wanted to talk about things they’ve implemented, seen, and/or experienced.

One thing I want to emphasize, Jeff announced the ITQ Cloud Platform. A managed VCF solution leveraging hardware from local bare metal providers. Available in the Netherlands first, but branching out to other European countries fast. Providing a true sovereign VCF based private cloud platform to all customers! This is an audio-only episode, so no youtube this time. However, the episode can be listened to via the embedded player below, and of course on Apple, Spotify etc.

As mentioned in the intro, this episode is not sponsored by ITQ and neither am I affiliated in any shape or form. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Johan, Jeff, Toine, DJ, Florian, and Paul!

vSAN Storage Rules policy capability allows to set dedupe/compression/encryption per VM? The 2026 update!

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It seems to be a regularly question, and with most recent releases things have changed once again, so I figured I would rewrite my post and point from the original to this update. So what is the question? When you create an SPBM policy you will see a screen which seem to indicate that certain data services can be enabled on a per VM basis. Those data services would be Encryption, Compression, Deduplication, and Hybrid or All-Flash. This is not the case of course, the Storage Rules section was intended to specify which storage services needed to be enabled (or disabled) for a particular datastore to show up as compatible with the policy.

Now with 9.1 various things have changed, and I want to call this out. First of all, when you have Auto-RAID enabled for the policy you don’t even see all the options any longer.

Now, when you disable Auto-RAID the below is what it looks like.

Confusingly, this seems to indicate that these options were only here for disabling/enabling dataservices, however we now that this is not the case. So let’s clarify what these do and which version does what, as I am mildly confused as well at this point. I created a table which hopefully helps explaining how this works and what does what?!

VersionServiceRuleFunction
All versions
(OSA and ESA)		EncryptionData-At-RestWill only present datastores which have data-at-rest-encryption enabled
All versions
(OSA and ESA)		EncryptionNo encryptionWill only present datastores which have data-at-rest-encryption disabled
All versions
(OSA and ESA)		EncryptionNo preferenceWill present datastores with or without data-at-rest encryption enabled
All versions
(OSA)		Storage tierAll flashWill only present datastores which are All-Flash
All versions
(OSA)		Storage tierHybridWill only present datastores which are Hybrid
All versions
(OSA)		Storage tierNo preferenceWill present datastores that are All-Flash or Hybrid
All versions
(OSA and ESA)		Data ReductionDeduplication and compressionWill only present datastores which have deduplication and compression enabled
All versions
(OSA and ESA)		Data ReductionCompression onlyWill only present datastores which have compression enabled
vSAN 9.1 and later
(ESA)		Data ReductionNo data reductionWill only present datastores which have compression disabled, it will not disable compression or deduplication!
Pre vSAN 9.1
(ESA)		Data ReductionNo data reductionDisables Compression on all objects associated with the policy
All versions
(OSA)		Data ReductionNo data reductionWill only present datastores which have compression disabled, it will not disable compression or deduplication!
All versions
(OSA and ESA)		Data ReductionAll versions (OSA and ESA)Will present datastores with or without deduplication and compression enabled

HDD attached to MacOS constantly rattling/spinning?

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I have an HDD attached to my Mac for backups and as storage for photos which are archived. (I don’t think this is MacOS version specific, but for me this happened with MacOS Tahoe 26.7. The last couple of days I noticed that my disk was constantly rattling / spinning, to the point where it started to annoy me. I rebooted my Mac, but it made no difference. I looked at the Activity Monitor and couldn’t identify what was causing this, so I opened up the terminal and managed to figure it out pretty quickly using the following command:

sudo lsof +D /Volumes/Backup

This provided a list of all the different processes, and users, accessing that particular volume. I noticed that command “mds_store” with user “_mds_stores” was accessing the disk constantly in various directories. A quick search revealed that this is MacOS Spotlight indexing and cataloging files to speed up search. As the disk is just used as a backup target I decided to disable the indexing of the volume the following way:

  • Open System Settings
  • Go to Spotlight
  • Scroll down to “Search Privacy…”
  • Click “+” to add the volume you want to exclude from being indexed and click Done

Within seconds, literally, the rattling stopped and I regained my sanity.