Anyone who knows me knows I get a little excited about new technology. So when I heard about all the great enhancements that v6r1 was bringing to the table, I jumped on it. I was excited about the obvious things, vMotion was supported. I got everything up and running, it works great, but how could I use the system i to back it all up. Well a couple of months have gone by, and I finally got around to reading the redbook! VCB works! And it's easy!
Before I get into VCB let me quickly tell you what I have learned. You should have your vCenter Server be an integrated Windows Server, this way you can shut down the VM's from the System i command line. If anyone needs to know how just ask. Have another Server, not integrated, that's running ESXi or something. There you should have another DC running, with DNS, DHCP, Directory Services, etc. That way if you need to bring the System i partition down, you still have something of an infrastructure, and you don't really need to back it up.
Now for VCB you need another Physical integrated server, as for setting it up, read the redbook, they did a great job.
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/pdfs/sg247408.pdf
I learned another nice little trick through this redbook. To expand the C:\ drive of a VM, make it larger, link it up to another VM, then use disk part to extend it. Well guess what, you can do that with an integrated windows server too! Vary it off, make the Storage space larger, link it up to another server, extend it, then link it back to the original. It works great!!!!!
I'm going to get VCB up and running A.S.A.P., which will probably be after the new year, but as soon as I get it working I will let you know how it works.
