This is the fourth post in the series about building a three-tier application for demonstration, lab, and education purposes. If you have been following along, you have created the base Photon template as well as simple database and application servers.

This post covers the final layer of our stack, the web presentation tier. I have said it before, but the configuration of the web server here is really simple, and if you have made it this far, you’re golden.

The Web Server (web-01a)

All of the hosts in this application run “web server” software, but this one has the web server designation because it is the one that the user directly accesses. The entire back end could be replaced with real application middleware and an RDBMs, but the user expects this one to present an SSL-encrypted web page on port 443. This time, I have chosen not to use Apache, and there is no need for Python. There is no CGI, and minimal configuration is required aside from issuing another certificate for the SSL. This tier is mostly interesting because it will support the virtual name of the application in addition to the real name(s) of your web server(s).

The red box in the following diagram highlights the component that we are building in this post.

Again, the first steps look quite a bit like the steps we performed for the application and database servers as we assign the personality to the template. I will again outline the steps here as a reminder. Details can be found in my post about the database server.

Let’s get started!

1. Deploy a copy of the base Photon template you created by following the steps in my first post.
2. Name it something that makes sense to you for your web server. I called mine web-01a
3. Power it up and log in as the root user
4. Change the hostname in /etc/hostname and in /etc/hosts
5. Change the IP address in /etc/systemd/network/10-static-eth0.network
6. Use a SSH client to access the machine as root (makes pasting possible)

Instead of installing Apache again, we are going to use nginx. You can do the same thing with Apache, but I wanted to try something a little more lightweight and the nginx configuration for this use case is really simple.

Install nginx to be used as a reverse proxy

The web server machine will function as a reverse proxy, sending user requests bound for port 443 on this server to the application server at https://app-01a.corp.local:8443

# tdnf install nginx

The nginx install is less than 6 MB and takes a few seconds:

Configure the reverse proxy

Edit the configuration file, /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

# vi +116 /etc/nginx/nginx/conf

by adding the following at the bottom of the file, at line 116, just before the closing “}” in the file.

   # HTTPS server
   #
   server {
      listen 443;
      server_name webapp.corp.local;

      ssl on;
      ssl_certificate     /etc/nginx/ssl/webapp.pem;
      ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/webapp.key;

      ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:1m;
      ssl_session_timeout 2m;

      location / {
         proxy_pass https://app-01a.corp.local:8443/;
         proxy_set_header Host $host;
         proxy_redirect http:// https://;
      }
   }

Notice that we need an SSL certificate and a key to make this work. We have done this before, so let’s create those now.

Make the ssl directory and switch into it

Let’s just create the certificates in the place that the server expects them to be.

# mkdir -p /etc/nginx/ssl
# cd /etc/nginx/ssl

Build the configuration file

It is common for multiple web servers to be configured in a pool, behind a load balancer. I create the certificate here using a name, webapp.corp.local. This name can be assigned to the load balancer’s VIP. If there is only one web server, as in my example here, this name can also be an alias that resolves to the one web server. For simplicity, and possibly for other use cases, the certificate configuration we build here includes the names of three web servers: web-01a, web-02a and web-03a.

Create the file webapp.conf

# vi webapp.conf

with the following contents, modified as needed for your environment:

[req]
distinguished_name = req_distinguished_name
x509_extensions = v3_req
default_md = sha256
prompt = no
[req_distinguished_name]
C = US
ST = California
L = Palo Alto
O = VMware
OU = Hands-on Labs
CN = webapp.corp.local
[v3_req]
keyUsage = keyEncipherment, dataEncipherment
extendedKeyUsage = serverAuth
subjectAltName = @alt_names
[alt_names]
DNS.1 = webapp.corp.local
DNS.2 = web-01a.corp.local
DNS.3 = web-02a.corp.local
DNS.4 = web-03a.corp.local

Save and close the file.

Generate the key and certificate

Note that this is a long command and you may need to scroll to the right to get all of it. Ensure it ends with “webapp.conf”

# openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 1825 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout webapp.key -out webapp.pem -config webapp.conf

(optional) Validate that the PEM file “looks right”

I put this command here for those who want to look at the certificate. It is a good command to know in case you have a certificate file and want to know what information it contains. That can help you match the certificate to the proper host without needing to install it and then find out it is not the right one.

# openssl x509 -in webapp.pem -noout -text

Start the nginx server and configure it to startup when the VM boots

# systemctl start nginx
# systemctl enable nginx

Verify

With the other components (db-01a, app-01a) online, reachable and tested, you can test the whole solution with curl from the console of the web server

# curl -k https://web-01a/cgi-bin/app.py

This should return the data from the database in HTML format by executing the script on the application server.

You can filter the results by appending a querystring. Try this one:

# curl -k https://web-01a/cgi-bin/app.py?querystring=science

That query should return a single entry with a name containing the word science. It may be difficult to read on the command line since it is HTML. These look nicer via a GUI web browser anyway, and you can modify the filter using the form at the top of the table:

That’s it!

You now have the components of a rudimentary three-tier web application that you can use in your lab. I hope this build has provided some useful tools for you. In the final post, I will use this set of VMs and cover an example of how to implement a pool of webservers in front of the application and database tier.

Thank you for reading!

Oh, just one more thing…

Notice the pretty green lock next to the URL in my web browser in the previous screen shot?

SSL Certificate Trust

In this application, we have a self-signed SSL certificate. It should be created with the name webapp.corp.local, or whatever you selected for your environment. To get rid of the web browser security warnings and have the shiny green lock show up, you need to do two things:

Configure DNS Records

The only record you need from the client side is one that points to webapp.corp.local.

If you have a Windows-based DNS server, you can create the records using PowerShell. The following 2 lines create a DNS host (A) record for web-01a.corp.local and then a DNS alias (CNAME) record for webapp.corp.local that points to it.

PS> Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -ComputerName 'dns.corp.local' -ZoneName 'corp.local' -name 'db-01a' -IPv4Address '192.168.120.10' -CreatePtr

PS> Add-DnsServerResourceRecordCName -ComputerName 'dns.corp.local' -ZoneName 'corp.local' -Name 'webapp' -HostNameAlias 'web-01a.corp.local.'

This configuration allows the virtual name webapp to be separate from the web-01a name and enables the addition of other web servers to a pool, followed by the reassignment of the webapp name to a load balancer IP.

If you don’t have Windows-based DNS, you can edit your /etc/hosts file on the client or add the DNS records to your nameserver using the procedures required for your environment.

Trust the Self-Signed Certificate

Once you have name resolution knocked out, you need to trust the certificate on your client. You can really trust the certificate, or you can sometimes create an exception in the web browser. Do whichever works for you and makes you happy. Without trust, this is what the connection looks like in Chrome:

In our labs, we download the web server’s certificate to the client machine and add it to the Windows Trusted Root Certification Authorities store or one of the subtrees within Keychain Access on MacOS. That will handle IE on Windows, and Chrome browsers on Windows and MacOS.

If you save the certificate file to your desktop in Windows and double-click it, the bold text pretty much sums up what you need to do.

There are a variety of ways to get this done, and there are some shortcuts, but the process has not changed in many years and this Microsoft Windows Blog article covers a process that works.

Firefox manages its own trust store, so you need to import it separately if you want to use that browser. Check the Mozilla Wiki for detailed instructions about how to do this. Note that newer versions of Firefox have implemented more strict checking. Basically, they refuse to accept a “leaf” certificate that is specified as a Certificate Authority certificate (why is your web server using the CA certificate??) and will not allow a non-CA certificate to be added to its trusted root CA certificate store. Getting this to look nice requires additional hoops that are beyond the scope of this article. We have a Microsoft CA implemented in our labs and generally issue certificates from there. Since that CA is trusted by all clients within the environment, there is no issue.

Thank you again for reading!

The post HOL Three-Tier Application, Part 4 – Web Server appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

If you have been following along in this series, first of all, thank you! Next, you should have a basic three-tier application created:

A Simple Three-Tier Application

I tried to use simple components to make it usable in either a home lab or a nested environment, so they should perform exceedingly well in a real environment.

Virtual Machine Profile

The component Photon OS machines boot in a few seconds, even in our nested environment, and their profiles are fairly conservative:

• 1 vCPU
• 2 GB RAM
• 15.625 GB disk

Once configured as indicated in this series, these VMs will export as OVAs that are around 300 MB each, making them reasonably portable.

The storage consumed after thin-provisioned deployment is less than 650 MB for each virtual machine. At runtime, each consumes an additional 2 GB for the swapfile. During boot, in my environment, each VM’s CPU usage is a little over 600 MHz and the active RAM reports 125 MB, but those normalize quickly to nearly 0 MHz and 20 MB active RAM (+23 MB virtualization overhead). You may be able to reduce their RAM allocations, but I have not tried this.

So, what can I do with this thing?

It is nice to have tools, but without a reason to use them, they’re not that much fun. We use tools like this in our labs to demonstrate various functionality of our products and help our users understand how they work. Here are a few ideas, just to get you thinking:

vMotion, Storage vMotion, SRM Protection and Recovery

The virtual machines that you created can be used as a set, but the base Photon OS template also makes a great single VM for demonstrating vMotion or Site Recovery Manager (SRM) recovery in a lab environment. They are small, but they have some “big VM” characteristics:

• The VMware Tools provide appropriate information up to vCenter
• They respond properly to Guest OS restart and power off actions
• Photon OS handles Guest Customization properly, so you can have the IP address changed during template deployment and SRM recovery.
• You can ping and SSH into them
• You can use them to generate load on your hosts and demonstrate Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) functionality

Firewalling/Micro-segmentation

We use a previous version of this application in several of our NSX labs that debuted at VMworld 2016. For a good micro-segmentation use case, you can look at HOL-1703-USE-2 – VMware NSX: Distributed Firewall with Micro-Segmentation. The manual is available for download here, or you can take the lab here.

For a more complicated use case using a similar application to demonstrate SRM and NSX integration, look at HOL-1725-USE-2 – VMware NSX Multi-Site DR with SRM. For that lab, the manual is available here and the lab is here.

Each of the tiers must communicate with the others using specific ports

• Client to Web = 443/tcp
• Web to App = 8443/tcp
• App to DB = 80/tcp

You can use this application to test firewall rules or other network restrictions that you are planning to implement. If a restriction breaks the application, you can determine where and why, then try again. If you want to change the port numbers to match your needs, you can do that as well. Keeping the application simple means that modifications should also be simple.

Load Balancing (Distribution)

The basic idea here is that you can create clones of the web-01a machine as many times as you like and pool them behind a load balancer. In your lab, if you have it, you may want to use NSX as a load balancer. If you want to do that, I suggest checking out Module 3 – Edge Services Gateway in the HOL-1703-SDC-1 – VMware NSX: Introduction and Feature Tour lab, which covers how to set that up. The manual is here and the lab is here.

If you want to use another vendor’s solution, feel free to do that as well. This application is REALLY simple. Some free load balancing solutions can be implemented using nginx or haproxy. Fortunately, we already know about nginx from the build of our web servers, so I will cover that later in this post. First, though, I want to cover a DNS round robin configuration since understanding that makes the nginx load balancing simpler for the lab.

Example 1 – Load Distribution via DNS Round Robin

If you don’t have the resources for another VM, you can implement simple load distribution via DNS round robin as long as you understand a few limitations:

1. You must have access to change DNS for your lab environment.
2. Using only DNS, you get load distribution but not really balancing; there is no awareness of the load on any particular node. Rather, you simply get the next one in the list.
3. There is no awareness of the availability of any node in the pool. DNS simply provides the next address, whether it is responding or not.
4. Connecting from a single client may not show balancing since optimizations in modern web browsers may keep existing sockets open.

In this first example, I have 3 web servers (web-01a, web-02a, web-03a) with IP addresses 192.168.120.30, 31, and 32. My SSL certificate contains the name webapp.corp.local and it is loaded onto each of the web servers. The picture looks something like this:

Create the VMs

To create web-02a and web-03a, I simply clone my web-01a VM then reset the hostnames and IP addresses of each clone to the new values:

• web-02a – 192.168.120.31
• web-03a – 192.168.120.32

Alternatively, I can make a template from the web-01a VM and deploy the copies using Guest Customization to reconfigure them. Just make sure to populate the /etc/hosts file on the customized machines since the process wipes out and rebuilds that file.

Configure DNS

The required DNS changes are not complicated. You basically assign the name webapp.corp.local to the IP addresses of your web servers and set the time-to-live (TTL) to a low, non-zero value.

Using PowerShell against my lab DNS server called controlcenter.corp.local that manages the corp.local zone, I add DNS records with a 1 second TTL, associating all of the web server IP addresses to the name webapp.corp.local:

$ttl = New-TimeSpan -Seconds 1

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -ComputerName 'controlcenter.corp.local' -ZoneName 'corp.local' -name 'webapp' -IPv4Address '192.168.120.30' -TimeToLive $ttl

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -ComputerName 'controlcenter.corp.local' -ZoneName 'corp.local' -name 'webapp' -IPv4Address '192.168.120.31' -TimeToLive $ttl

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -ComputerName 'controlcenter.corp.local' -ZoneName 'corp.local' -name 'webapp' -IPv4Address '192.168.120.32' -TimeToLive $ttl

If you use a BIND DNS server, just create multiple A records pointing to the same name. BIND 4.9 or higher will automatically rotate through the records. In my case, I have a Windows 2012 DNS server, and it cycles through the addresses when the webapp.corp.local name is requested.

Testing the Rotation

Here is a simple example of what this looks like from an ESXi host in my lab. A simple ping test shows the rotation occurring as intended:

[root@esx-03a:~] ping -c 1 webapp.corp.local
PING webapp.corp.local (192.168.120.30): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.120.30: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.105 ms

--- webapp.corp.local ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 1.105/1.105/1.105 ms

[root@esx-03a:~] ping -c 1 webapp.corp.local
PING webapp.corp.local (192.168.120.32): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.120.32: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.142 ms

--- webapp.corp.local ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 1.142/1.142/1.142 ms

[root@esx-03a:~] ping -c 1 webapp.corp.local
PING webapp.corp.local (192.168.120.31): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.120.31: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.083 ms

--- webapp.corp.local ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 1.083/1.083/1.083 ms

Accessing the Application

Use the https://webapp.corp.local/cgi-bin/app.py URL from your web browser to access the application. Within the three-tier application, the script on the app server displays which web server made the call to the application.

The script will show the IP address of the calling web server unless it knows the name you would like it to display instead. You provide a mapping of the IPs to the names you would like displayed at the top of the app.py script on the app server:

webservers = {
 '192.168.120.30':'web-01a',
 '192.168.120.31':'web-02a',
 '192.168.120.32':'web-03a'
}

Simply follow the syntax and replace or add the values which are appropriate for your environment.

A Challenge Showing Load Distribution from a Single Host

Hmm… while the ping test shows that DNS is doing what we want, clicking the Refresh button in your web browser may not be switching to a different web server as you expect.

A refresh does not necessarily trigger a new connection and DNS lookup, even if the TTL has expired. Modern web browsers implement optimizations that will keep an existing connection open because odds are good that you will want to request more data from the same site. If a connection is already open, the browser will continue to use that, even if the DNS TTL has expired. This means that you will not connect to a different web server.

You can wait for the idle sockets to time out or force the sockets closed and clear the web browser’s internal DNS cache before refreshing the web page, but that is not really convenient to do every time you want to demonstrate the distribution functionality. If you want to be able to click Refresh and immediately see that you have connected to a different web server in the pool, you can use NSX or a third-party load balancer. If you want to use the tools that we have currently available, the next example works around this issue.

Example 2 – Implementing a (Really) Basic Load Balancer

Making a small change to the nginx configuration on one of the web server machines and adjusting DNS can provide a simple demonstration load balancer for your lab. This requires a slight deviation from our current architecture to inject the load balancer VM in front of the web server pool:

Three-Tier Application with Load Balancer

Note that there are better, more feature-rich ways to do this, but we are going for quick and simple in the lab.

Create the Load Balancer

Create the load balancer VM. You can deploy a new one from a Photon OS base template and go through the configuration from there, but conveniently, the difference between the load balancer configuration and that of our web servers is just one line!

So, make a copy of the web-01a VM and update its address and hostname:

• lb-01a – 192.168.120.29

Change the nginx Configuration

On the lb-01a VM, edit the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file

# vi +130 /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Change line 130 from

proxy_pass https://app-01a.corp.local:8443/;

to

proxy_pass https://webpool.corp.local/;

This will allow us to leverage DNS round-robin to rotate through the list of web servers and distribute the load. Nginx has advanced configurations to handle load balancing, but this will get the job done for a lab or demonstration. Terminating SSL on the load balancer while using plain HTTP on the web servers allows a lot more flexibility, but the configuration changes are beyond the scope of what I want to do here.

Restart nginx

# systemctl restart nginx

Adjust DNS

Finally, adjust DNS to move the webapp.corp.local name to point at the load balancer and put the web servers into webpool.corp.local instead.

If you are using Windows DNS, you can use PowerShell. For BIND, edit and create the records as needed.

1. Remove the existing webapp.corp.local pool by deleting all of the A records that point to the individual web servers:

$rec = Get-DnsServerResourceRecord -ComputerName 'controlcenter.corp.local' -ZoneName 'corp.local' -Name 'webapp' -RRType A
if( $rec ) {
  $rec | % { Remove-DnsServerResourceRecord -InputObject $_ -ZoneName 'corp.local' -Force }
}

2. Create a new webapp.corp.local A record that points to the lb-01a machine:

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -ComputerName 'controlcenter.corp.local' -ZoneName 'corp.local' -name 'webapp' -IPv4Address '192.168.120.29'

3. Create the new webpool.corp.local that contains the individual web servers:

$ttl = New-TimeSpan -Seconds 1

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -ComputerName 'controlcenter.corp.local' -ZoneName 'corp.local' -name 'webpool' -IPv4Address '192.168.120.30' -TimeToLive $ttl

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -ComputerName 'controlcenter.corp.local' -ZoneName 'corp.local' -name 'webpool' -IPv4Address '192.168.120.31' -TimeToLive $ttl

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -ComputerName 'controlcenter.corp.local' -ZoneName 'corp.local' -name 'webpool' -IPv4Address '192.168.120.32' -TimeToLive $ttl

Access the Application

Now, point your web browser to the https://webapp.corp.local/cgi-bin/app.py URL. Each time you click Refresh in your web browser or enter a new search string in the Name Filter box and click the Apply button, the data refresh and the Accessed via: line should update with a different web server from the pool:

Rotating through web servers in the pool

Because the web browser’s connection is to the load balancer VM, which controls which web server receives the request, we eliminate the issue experienced when using only DNS round robin. This very basic implementation does not handle failed servers in the pool and is not something that would be used in production, but, hey, this is a lab!

It is possible to extend this idea to put a load balancer in front of a pool of application servers as well: replace line 130 in each web server’s /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file with the URL of an app server pool instead of pointing them directly at the app-01a VM.

That’s a Wrap!

That concludes the series on building a minimal three-tier application. I am hopeful that you have found this interesting and can use these tools in your own environment.

Thank you for reading!

The post HOL Three-Tier Application, Part 5 – Use Cases appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

New Hands-on Labs released and chance to win a cool DJI Drone

Folks,

We are incredibly happy to announce our latest release of Hands-on Labs and a very cool DJI Drone Raffle Giveaway for taking any of our eligible Hands-on Labs. Please visit our official contest site for more details Contest runs from April 19th to May 19th 2017 Giveaway is for US residents only, sorry no VMware employees.

Below is a list of our recently released Hands-on Labs for our Spring Release. We would also like to thank our entire team for making this happen. You can take any of these labs from our Hands-on Labs site http://labs.hol.vmware.com

Newly released Hands-on Labs

• HOL-1731-SDC-1 – What’s New: Virtual SAN v6.5
• HOL-1731-SDC-2 – Advanced vSAN 6.5: Operations
• HOL-1733 – What’s New: vRealize Automation v7.2
• HOL-1810-01-SDC – Virtualization 101: Introduction to vSphere

Updates to existing Hands-on Labs

• HOL-1701 (all lab codes) – Updated to vROps v6.5 and Log Insight v4.  Includes updates to VOA Hands-on Labs
• HOL-1706-SDC-5 – VMware Cloud Foundation
• HOL-1710  – Updating to the GA release of vSphere v6.5.  Log Insight content
• HOL-1728-SDC-1  – General updates
• HOL-1730-USE-1 – Updated to Cloud Native GA code
• HOL-1751-MBL-1 – New module to include Instant Clones
• HOL-1756-MBL-1 – New interactive simulation lab and renamed to Horizon Cloud-Hosted Infrastructure – Explore and Manage
• HOL-1757   Updated to AirWatch v9.0
• HOL-1787-USE-1 – New features of vCD
• HOL-1790-CHG-1 – Updated for vRA 7.2

Thank you for your support and enjoy your Hands-on Labs –

VMware Hands-on Labs Team

The post New Hands-on Labs and Chance to win a DJI Mavic Pro Drone appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

Folks,

Thank you for participating in our Raffle Drawing for the very cool DJI Drone – we had a lot of fun putting it together for you.  We thought it would be great to get to know our winner and did a little write up to introduce him to our readers.

Tell us about your professional career background and interests ?

 I work in healthcare specializing in virtualization technology and strategy. I’ve been working in IT for over 20 years, and working with VMware solutions for over 15. My current interests involve Cloud Management and Automation, and Network Virtualization. I also enjoy attending my local VMUG meetings to understand how other people are addressing problems in Healthcare with technology.

 How was your Hands-on Lab Experience? Anything we can do to improve the experience?  

I’m a huge proponent of the HOL’s. I used them frequently to study for VMware Certification exams, especially to get to bits that aren’t generally available… Additionally, many of the labs give you free reign to go off of the lab manual, and do other tasks. For me, this is much easier than a home lab. Everything is properly configured, consistent, and there’s no consequence for making changes that would break a home lab configuration. Over the years, the HOL environment has gotten better and the catalog broader, there’s really nothing else like it out there.

 Advice to users out there on using the Hands-on Labs

 Get out there and try them! Don’t be afraid to use a HOL environment for other tasks than the lab, such as performing tasks on a certification blueprint. I rarely find that there are things I cannot perform in the HOL’s, short of complex multisite configurations. The HOL’s are great training if you’re lacking budget, offering the latest content and products.

The post Congratulations Brian W – DJI Drone Raffle Contest Winner appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

Folks,

We will be hosting another vForum Online event this June 28th and have great Sessions and Hands-on Labs lined up to make your learning experience even better. These events are exciting as we engage with users from all of the Americas. We will be online monitoring the infrastructure and answering questions from you.

We look forward to seeing you there !

See Agenda 

REGISTER NOW

The post Join us for Americas vForum Online June 28th – Tons of great Sessions and Hands-on Labs appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

Friends,

Some great news !

The VMware Learning Platform engineering team put together a very cool Tool to help you do a little sanity check before you take a Hands-on Lab. It will check your browser compatibility, and some basic network sanity checks to make sure your lab experience is as best as can be.

Be sure to send us your feedback and if you think its useful tell a friend.

Link: http://www.vmwlp.com/HOL/compatibility/

The post Use our Browser / Network Compatibility Test tool before you start your lab experience .. appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

As we return from a record breaking VMworld Europe in Barcelona, I wanted to take a minute to talk about some of the new catalogs you will be seeing in the Hands-on Lab Online Portal in the coming weeks as we start to release the new labs.

This year we have over 80 new labs in the 2017 Hands-on Labs Catalog and based on feedback we received from you, our users, we still needed a better way to break up the content in the catalog listings to make things easier to find.  For example, we have 44 labs in the Software Defined Data Center catalog.  Searching through that catalog and trying to find the bit of content you are looking for can be a daunting task!  For those that are not familiar with what the catalog structure looks like today, here is how we have things laid out.

We have four main catalogs, SDDC, Hybrid Cloud, Mobility and Challenge.  There is a fifth catalog, Focus Labs, we populate with the latest and most popular labs.  You can start to see the difficulty in finding 80+ labs in only four very generic catalogs.

We tested the new catalog listings at VMworld and from the feedback we received from attendees, it made finding labs around specific products or features much easier.  So here are the new catalogs and what contents you may expect to find in them:

I also wanted to share a couple of additional tips that may come in handy.  The first is the search feature.  You can use the search box to find a lab by SKU (i.e. HOL-1810-01-SDC) or by product or keyword.  Be sure to click the ‘ALL LABS’ link first, so your search will be across all the catalogs.

In this example, after clicking on the ALL LABS link, I searched for ‘firewall’.  This will bring up any labs that include the term ‘firewall’ in the lab title, description or module listing.  This can also be used to search for product names, like NSX or a lab SKU.

If you have taken a lab and would like to find other labs that are based on the same product, you can use the ‘Lab Details’ section.

In the Products section, you will see the major products featured in the lab.  Click on the product you are interested in and you will be shown all the other labs that include that product.  By clicking on vRealize Log Insight, I’m given this listing of labs:

When you find a lab that interests you, just click on the link and you will be brought right to the lab details page for the lab, where you can enroll to take the lab.

That’s all for now, but stay tuned for updates!  The new labs will be here before you know it!

The post Upcoming Changes to the Catalogs and Tips on How to Find Things appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

It all starts today! We are pleased to announce we are releasing the VMworld 2017 Hands-on Labs. We will continue to release these on a daily basis until all 81 are available! If you don’t see your favorite lab, be sure to check back as all labs **should** be released by the end of next week.

Before we get started, just a couple of reminders. First, once we release a new lab, the current one will be placed in the HOL Archive catalog and will eventually be removed December 1st, 2017. For example, we are releasing the HOL-1803 series of labs today, so the HOL-1703 series will be placed in the HOL Archive catalog. The labs in the archive catalog will take longer to start and be sure you wait until the Lab Status indicator says Ready before you start. If you would like more information or how the new labs map to the existing labs, you can review my previous post, Transitioning to the 2018 Hands-on Labs. You may also notice that the catalogs look a bit different and you may be confused on where to find the lab you are looking for. You can review the post, Upcoming Changes to the Catalogs and Tips on How to Find Things for all the details.

The first release of new labs has typically been the top performers from VMworld and this year is no exception. Below are the labs we are releasing today. You can click on the lab SKU and name to be taken directly to the lab. One question we receive quite often is if the manuals are available in other formats, so in the second column you will find a link to the PDF and HTML version of the manual. These links are from our Hands-on Labs Documents site, where you can find manuals for all the labs dating back to 2014. Finally, the last column shows which lab the new one is replacing.

The post Releasing the VMworld 2017 Hands-on Labs appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

Hello Friends of Hands-on Labs, 

We wanted to share with you some background on Hands-on Labs Live stats and would love some feedback on what else you would like to see.  The project was inspired by the VMworld Jumbo Tron Display – our large screen displaying stats during the show. We wanted to make this available for all our users so they can check on their favorite labs and check to see some stats on our infrastructure usage.  A huge thanks to Andrew Hald and team for putting this creation together for us.

Official Live Stats Link: http://go.hol.vmware.com/live-stats/?eventName=hol-global (As of September 27, 2017)

Some of my favorite features:

One application for many devices: The app was designed to work for our massive overhead projectors at VMworld as well as your favorite mobile devices. This is pure CSS black magic, the app can auto rotate or you can stop it to check on your favorite stats.

Reporting on stats during multiple events. We run HOLs at many events during the year and this year was pretty complex as we had many fall at the exact same times across the globe. As you can imagine creating usage reports gets complicated.

Here are some exaymples of the cities we used LiveStats on

vForum Tokyo: http://go.hol.vmware.com/live-stats/?eventName=vforum-tokyo

vForum Singapore: http://go.hol.vmware.com/live-stats/?eventName=vforum-singapore  (Nov14)

vForum Thailand: http://go.hol.vmware.com/live-stats/?eventName=vforum-bangkok (Nov14th)

Users around the Globe:  I enjoy this feature as it is fun to see where the labs are taken around the world.

Top Labs: It seems like most of the content developers are concerned with this feature as they like to compete against each other.

Please send us your feedback ! This is our first iteration of LiveStats and hope its useful for you – we can only improve on it if you send us your feedback. We would love to hear from you!

The post VMware Hands-on Labs Live Stats – Fun way to track usage statistics – Official Link appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

With 2017 drawing to a close, it is time for our annual maintenance: retiring labs that were released at VMworld in 2016, refreshing some of our content for spring, and preparing for VMworld 2018.

If you notice that your favorite HOL-17## lab is no longer with us, please look for the shiny new HOL-18## version. We try to keep the ## the same as we transition between years. You can browse the catalogs here.

Thank you!

The Hands-on Labs core team wants to give a big THANK YOU to our massive team of volunteers who create the content. We could not do this without you! A special shout out to the captains and principals who own the content and ensure that it remains functional throughout the year.

Also, thank you to our users, nearly 370,000 of you. Whether you take our labs online, at events like VMUGs, vForums, SociaLabs, VMworlds, or a combination, we appreciate your support.  New web browser updates have been keeping us on our toes, so please keep sending in the feedback and letting us know how things are going.

Happy Holidays!

-The VMware Hands-on Labs Team

The post Year End 2017 appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

We are delighted to announce the 2018 Hands-on Lab manuals translated to serve our global audience. Click here for instructions on how to change your language in the Hands-on Labs portal.  Once you have your language preference set, if a lab manual is available in your preferred language, it will be displayed as the lab deploys.

In an effort to better serve our ever growing global user community, we have added three additional languages to our catalog, Traditional Chinese, French and German.  We are likely to add more manuals in more languages, so check back often as we update this post!

Did you know that you can change your language preference when you log in to the Hands-on Labs site?  Just click the link next to the Globe and select your preferred language.

Once logged in, you will see badges next to each lab indicating what languages the lab is available in.

You can click on the language badge to see all of the labs available in that particular language.

We have also made available PDF and HTML versions of the manuals. You can use the tables below to download or view them. You can also click the Lab SKU & Name in the table to be taken directly to the lab.  The manuals are also listed on our documents site and will be updated as this post is updated.

Brazilian Portuguese (Português)

French (Français)

German (Deutsche)

Japanese (日本語)

Korean (한국어)

Latin American Spanish (Español)

Simplified Chinese (简体中文)

Traditional Chinese (繁体中文)

The post Localized Manuals Now Available in Three New Languages! appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

Hi folks,

We are excited about announcing our first ever Global Raffle Contest – A FREE Trip to VMworld 2018! The contest starts April 18th and ends May 24th. We will be announcing the winner here on our Blog so please stay tuned.

What is the catch?

Nothing. We are running this raffle contest to show our appreciation to our global Hands-on Labs users. We also think it would be nice to have an extra set of hands helping us during VMworld (just kidding not required but happy to give the winner our special Hands-on Labs behind the scenes Super VIP Tour)

Be sure to take any of qualifying freshly minted Hands-on Labs and more info.

Here are some Frequently Asked Questions:

What will VMware pay for?

VMware will pay for your Airfare, Hotel, Conference Pass and Airfare up to $5,000 USD. You are responsible to follow your organizations and local laws, taxes, visa, passport and all other travel requirements. Please be sure to read the Terms and Conditions and be sure to obey your local contest laws.

What if I am already attending VMworld can I transfer the prize to my friend or colleague?

Yes. You will have 3 business days to declare the new winner and the new winner will need to be approved by VMware.

Will VMware pay for additional travel expenses?

VMware will cover Airfare, Hotel and a Full Conference Pass (up to $5K USD)

Is the contest for VMworld US and VMworld EMEA ?

Yes you pick your destination but as long as the cost is under $5K USD.

The post Want to attend VMworld 2018 but your team is out of travel budget? appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

Just in time for the new Hands-on Labs contest we recently announced, we have some new and updated labs for you!

These are labs that were initially released at VMworld and have now been updated to include new content or product versions.  We also have a few new labs around vRealize Lifecycle Manager, Pivotal Container Services (PKS) and VMware IoT Pulse.

While you enjoy these labs, we are just starting to develop labs for VMworld 2018.  Who knows?  Maybe you’ll win the contest and be one of the first to see the labs!

The post Spring Means New Labs! appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

The Hands-on Labs team has been working hard to make sure your experience this year at VMworld is the best! We’ve created a list of things you need to know about before you pack your bags for Las Vegas.

Find Labs That Fit Your Schedule

Take as many labs as you like, as many times as you want. The Hands-on Labs are flexible to fit your schedule. Here are of few options available at VMworld:

• Self-Paced Labs: Interact with the latest VMware products at your own pace at a traditional workstation. Labs are delivered in a first-come, first-served fashion and do not need to be scheduled in advance.

• Expert-Led Workshops:  Access to VMware product experts in an engaging, instructional environment in English, Japanese, Spanish or Portuguese. To attend an expert-led workshop, you must sign up in advance through the VMworld 2018 Content Catalog. 

• Hands-on Labs Tours: 30-minute behind-the-scenes peek at what it takes to run our Hands-on Labs. Get to meet lab creators and engineers running our multiple clouds. Make sure to book your tour at the HOL Tours Check-in desk.

What’s New?

Discover the new things that will be happening this year at VMworld Hands-on Labs.

• Hands-on Labs ON AIR: Hands-on Labs will be live streaming on Facebook Live and YouTube Live. Follow the action from any location and interact with us in real-time. Check out our blog to view the list of live streaming activities.

• Augmented Reality Content Wall: On-site iPad will be available to use and bring the Hands-on Labs Content Wall to life uncovering, more lab details.

• Hands-on Labs Connect: The nerve center of the Hands-on Labs room, stop by the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) area to take a lab on your own devices and interact with the new touchscreen Command Center Wall.

What about Prizes?

Don’t worry we got you covered and this year we are making it more interactive than ever! Here are a few ways to qualify to win.

• Hands-on Labs Lightning Labs: Are short, concentrated modules that are designed to maximize your time. In as little as 15 minutes you can learn something new, in the last two hours of each day to increase your chances of winning an Oculus Go 3D VR Headset.

• The CloudCred, Hands-On Labs Great Labs Game: Score your CloudCred points for EVERY lab and workshop. Follow the QR code at the end of your lab or session for CloudCred points to BIG PRIZES!!

• Code Coin: Earn 25 Code Coins for up to four labs taken, and 50 additional Coins by completing select CloudCred tasks. Code Coins can be spent on lattes & more in the VMTN Communities Lounge

Check out The CloudCred blog post for more details.

We look forward to seeing you at VMworld 2018.

Want more information? Check out these two videos on VMworld Hands-on Labs 2018.

Tips for Attending VMworld Hands-on Labs 2018

What’s New with 2018 VMworld Hands-on Labs

The post VMworld Hands-on Labs 2018 – What You Need to Know appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

Once again, we had another record breaking year at VMworld US.  We have a bit more time this year between VMworld US and VMworld Europe and thought we could fill that time by releasing the new labs!

As we prepare to get the latest labs out to you, we want to make sure you are prepared for what’s to come. The process is what we have done in year’s past and we will start rolling out the labs this week.  With VMworld Europe in November this year, we wanted to get these out sooner rather than later so you all could enjoy all the great new content!

As the new labs in the 2019 catalog get released, their 2018 counterparts will be placed in the HOL Archives catalog. The catalog can be found at the bottom of the list.  The catalog titles have stayed the same, with one exception.  The Horizon, Horizon Cloud and Workspace ONE content is moving from the Application and Desktop Virtualization to the Virtualized Workspace Services.

One thing to note is that once the 2018 labs are placed in the archive catalog, you will likely need to wait a bit longer for your lab to start and make sure the Lab Status indicates ‘Ready’ in green before proceeding with your lab.

As a reminder, in order to make room for all this great new content, we will have to retire the 2018 catalog.  As we release the 2019 labs, if the 2018 version is pretty much identical content, we will be retiring those labs immediately.  The exception is if the manual has been localized in other languages, we will keep the 2018 lab in the HOL Archives catalog until we have a localized version for the new 2019 manual.  For those of you that may be planning to use our HOL-in-a-Box service for upcoming events, make sure you keep those dates in mind and transition any events to the 2019 labs prior to that date!

Finally, to help you find the lab replacing the 2018 SKU, you can use the HOL 2018 to 2019 Lab Listing PDF.  For the most part, the 2019 SKU lined up to identical content that was in the 2018 SKU.  For example, HOL-1803-SDC-01 (NSX) has been updated and replaced with HOL-1903-01-NET.  In cases where there was no direct match, you can review the Notes column to see where the content is now or if it has been removed.

Stay tuned over the next couple weeks as we work to get this new content out to you!

The post Transitioning to the 2019 Hands-on Labs appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

We are pleased to announce the release of the top labs from VMworld 2018!

Just a couple of reminders before we get started. As we release the HOL-1900 series labs, the corresponding HOL-1800 series lab will be placed in the HOL Archives catalog. For all the details, you can review the previous post on Transitioning to the New 2019 Hands-on Labs. So if you don’t see the HOL-1800 series lab in the usual catalog, try the HOL Archives catalog or better yet, use the HOL 2018 to 2019 Lab Listing sheet and take the newer, HOL-1900 series version!

The labs listed below were some of the top performers at VMworld US in Las Vegas this year. You will see some familiar labs, like NSX, vSAN, Horizon, and Workspace ONE, but there is some great new content we adding this year. We have a new lab focused on NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud, Workspace ONE UEM Intelligence, and a new vRealize Orchestrator lab has been created to include more advanced content.

By clicking on the Lab SKU and Title, you will be taken directly to the lab.  There are also links to the PDF and HTML version of the manual, pulled from the Hands-on Labs Documents site. Finally, the last column will show the corresponding HOL-1800 series lab this new one is replacing.

By the way, if you have not seen how the Hands-on Labs room at VMworld was built out this year, check out the awesome time-lapse video!

Stay tuned as we announce more great content from this year’s catalog!

The post Top VMworld 2018 Labs Released! appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

For the first time at VMware, we launched the vWarrior Hands-on Labs Championship at vFORUM Singapore on 4^th October 2018. It was amazing to see the level of participation and excitement during the event. Within the teams, there was a great amount of teamwork as participants worked together to complete the required given tasks.  There were a lot of interactions with the audience as they cheered for their favorite teams and friends.

What is vWarrior…?

The vWarrior HOL Championship was a collaborative effort across three teams worldwide – the Global HOL team, SEAK (Southeast Asia and Korea) Marketing team and Systems Engineering team based in Singapore.

Our two Systems Engineers, Wen Bin Tay and Sheryl-Ann Lee were the brains behind the initiative. Together, they led a group of Systems Engineers to develop and organize the tournament.

vWarrior was inspired by the World Cup tournament format which consists of qualifying rounds and knockout stages where teams go head-to-head to be crowned the winners. The objective for each team was to challenge and beat other teams using their knowledge and technical skills across VMware portfolio of solutions in Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) and End-User Computing (EUC).

The championship was created using VMware’s Hands-on Labs environment with customized manuals created explicitly for the event to showcase the teams’ technical capabilities.

How vWarrior works…

At vFORUM Singapore, we had a total of 52 customers and partners, forming 18 teams of 2-3 people as they competed against each other. All teams were briefed a week in advance on the rules and content they would be tested on at the event.

At the event, there were two qualifying rounds that would allow teams to compete and proceed to the knockout stages. In each of the stages, the teams were tested across the VMware Portfolio: NSX, VSAN, vRealize Automation, and Horizon.

It was a close match with teams competing side-by-side and advancing through the stages. In the end, drum roll please, Team Luther: Amirtharaj, Ranjit, Venkateswara was crowned the Champion by passing all four stages and beating all the teams. As for the runner-up, we had Team Nasser: Jai, Ashok, Karthik.

Congratulations to all the teams for participating in our first vWarrior Hands-on Labs Championship! 

What’s Next for vWarrior HOL Championship…?

The feedback from participants and attendees were beyond our expectations.

“It was quite fun and very interesting and very good chance for us to understand and discover more of HOL (Hands-on Labs)” – Partner, vWarrior Participant

 “We took this as an opportunity to get familiarized in NSX which we are trying to use in our environment” – Satyanarayana Chowdry, vWarrior Participant

“I like this Challenge vWarrior, and I was preparing for the last week. It’s quite good, and it’s a good fight.” – Jai Prakash, vWarrior Participant

The vWarrior Hands-on Labs Championship was a huge success and we are looking to expand this to other regions and events. Please leave your comments and feedback if this would be something you would like to see in a city near you.

Watch the vWarrior Playlist videos to hear about the participant’s experience at the competition.

A big shout-out to the VMware Systems Engineer teams based in Singapore for volunteering their time and putting all the pieces together to make this a spectacular event. Great job, folks!

The post vWarrior Hands-on Labs Championship – vFORUM Singapore appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

We know your time is valuable and because that we have been working on identifying the best way to learn about VMware products in small segments of time. We have uncovered a breakthrough discovery that will transform the way you spend your next 30 minutes. How? With the development of Lightning Labs.

What are Lightning Labs?

Lightning Labs help you learn about VMware products in small segments of time. We have broken down the content of a lab into small “bite-sized” sections that allow you to learn about a core product feature quickly.

This week we launched the NSX Lightning Lab: Logical Switching. In this lab, you will get an introduction to NSX logical switching and review the scalability and availability of the NSX platform.

Learn how to:

• Review the NSX controller cluster
• Create a logical switch, then attach two VMs to the logical switch
• Review the scalability and high availability of the NSX platform

How will you spend your next 30 minutes? Take the NSX Logical Switch Lightning Lab today!

We are looking at expanding Lightning Labs across VMware products. Please make sure to subscribe to the Hands-on Labs blog for the latest updates.

Subscribe to our blog via RSS

The post Lightning Labs – The Best Way to Spend 30 Minutes appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

The Hands-on Labs Team is pleased to announce a new and improved way to provide feedback on your lab experience. If you need help finding new lab content or seeing an issue while taking a lab, you now have a central Support Portal for all your questions or feedback.

Visit http://hol-support.vmware.com to get started.

• Powered by Jira Service Desk, the new portal helps you search for commonly asked questions and answers.
• If an article did not address your question, click Support to find a selection of request types.
• We suggest you Login and Sign-up for an account before opening a ticket, so you can track all your requests.
• Look for the “Before opening a ticket” dropdown for a list of suggestions and common fixes.
• If you have an idea for a new or updated lab, select Lab Topic Idea.
• We are always open for ideas regarding how to improve the overall lab experience. To reach out to the team running the program, select New Feature Request.
• Please be aware that Hands-on Labs support is still on a best-effort basis. Response times will vary.

If you have any questions or problems with your labs, don’t hesitate. Reach out. We are here to help.

Enjoy your lab!

Simon Momber
Sr. Technical Marketing Architect

The post The Hands-on Labs Support Portal Has Arrived!! appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.

We are delighted to announce the 2019 Hands-on Lab manuals translated to serve our global audience. Click here for instructions on how to change your language in the Hands-on Labs portal.  Once you have your language preference set, if a lab manual is available in your preferred language, it will be displayed as the lab deploys.

Did you know that you can change your language preference when you log in to the Hands-on Labs site?  Just click the link next to the Globe and select your preferred language.

Once logged in, you will see badges next to each lab indicating what languages the lab is available in.

You can click on the language badge to see all of the labs available in that particular language.

We have also made available PDF and HTML versions of the manuals. You can use the tables below to download or view them. You can also click the Lab SKU & Name in the table to be taken directly to the lab.  The manuals are also listed on our documents site and will be updated as this post is updated.

Brazilian Portuguese (Português)

French (Français)

German (Deutsche)

Italian (Italiano)

Japanese (日本語)

Korean (한국어)

Latin American Spanish (Español)

Russian (Pусский)

Simplified Chinese (简体中文)

The post Take a Hands-on Lab in Your Own Language – 2019 Catalog Update appeared first on VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Blog.