Masters Education Program
PARSEC’s Masters Education Program (MEP) isn't your typical online technical seminar.
What if each month you could be a part of a seminar that is geared towards creating best practices for legacy and state-of-art systems with topics such as OpenVMS Crash-Dump Analysis or IP Filtering on UNIX? Would it impress your boss if you learned new methods to ensure current relevance and utility for your company? Would it elevate your job performance, or help you solve a vexing problem? If so, save your seat now in PARSEC's next MEP!
Every month you will learn information inspired by actual case studies that you can apply on-the-spot. We pack technical and practical material into a comfortable 2 hour online session that tops off with ample time for Q&A and valued feedback. Bonus! You get exclusive access to download our extensive documentation at the time of each seminar. Here's a sample list of some of our past seminars:
- Road Trip! VMS Bootcamp 2016 Conference Report
- Bare-Metal System Recovery
- Cleaning Out the Cruft on OpenVMS
- Systemd and Other Major Changes in Redhat Linux 7
- Monitoring OpenVMS with Open-Source SNMP Tools
- OpenVMS Performance Tools
- IP Filtering on Unix
As a perk of being a much appreciated PARSEC support customer, each session is free. If your company is not yet benefiting from PARSEC’s support, you can join any MEP for a modest cost per person. Furthermore, if you sign up for a telephone support contract with us, within 30 days of attending the MEP, we will credit the seminar cost to your support invoice. For as long as you’re a support customer, you will not only enjoy the peace of mind in knowing you’re support needs are covered, but future seminars will be free as well.
Building Proxmox Virtualization Clusters with Ceph Storage
This MEP is directed toward folks with curiousity around Ceph, Proxmox, or might be considering abandoning VMware after the Broadcom aquisition/debacle. In this session, we'll be working with a five node lab cluster and building it up with Proxmox clustering, and Ceph clustering for redundant storage. I'll take you through all the gotchas and twists in the configuration and show you want it's capable of afterwards. We'll even do some resilency testing as we kick nodes out of the cluster. We'll cover the migration path from VMware to Proxmox and some popular tools to help with that as well.
Introduction
# Welcome and session overview
# Presenter background
# Target audience: Ceph/Proxmox enthusiasts and VMware migrators
# Agenda review Why Consider Alternatives to VMware?
# Overview of Broadcom's acquisition of VMware
# Key changes: Subscription model shift, pricing increases, partner program alterations
# Impacts on users: Higher costs, reduced flexibility, support concerns
# Rising interest in open-source options like Proxmox VE
Introduction to Proxmox VE
# What is Proxmox VE?
# Core features: KVM virtualization, LXC containers, web-based management
# Clustering and high availability basics
# Comparison to VMware ESXi/vSphere
# Benefits: Open-source, no licensing fees, community support
Introduction to Ceph Storage
# What is Ceph?
# Key components: OSDs, Monitors, Managers, Pools
# Hyper-converged infrastructure with Proxmox
# Advantages: Scalability, redundancy, self-healing
# Why 5 nodes? Enhanced fault tolerance (tolerate 2 failures)
Lab Environment Overview
# Hardware setup: Five-node cluster details
# Network configuration: Management, VM traffic, Corosync, Ceph public/private networks
# Best practices for networking in hyper-converged setups
# Initial Proxmox installation on nodes
Setting Up the Proxmox Cluster
# Creating the initial cluster on node 1
# Joining additional nodes
# Verifying cluster quorum and status
# Common gotchas: Hostname/IP resolution, SSH access, firewall ports
# Centralized management demo
Installing and Configuring Ceph
# Installing Ceph services via GUI/CLI
# Configuring Monitors and Managers
# Setting public and cluster networks
# Creating OSDs on dedicated disks
# Pool creation and CRUSH rules
# Integrating Ceph as shared storage in Proxmox (RBD)
# Gotchas and twists: Disk preparation, network separation, tuning for performance
Demonstrating Cluster Capabilities
# Creating VMs and containers on Ceph storage
# Live migration between nodes
# High availability features overview
# Performance monitoring and basic benchmarks
# What the setup is capable of: Scalability, redundancy
Resiliency Testing
# Simulating node failures: Powering off/kicking nodes
# Observing Ceph recovery and rebalancing
# VM behavior during failures
# Cluster quorum and data integrity checks
# Lessons from real-world failure scenarios
Migration Path from VMware to Proxmox
# Planning considerations: Inventory, dependencies, testing
# Popular tools and methods
# Proxmox Import Wizard (ESXi direct import)
# Manual VMDK conversion and attachment
# Third-party tools (e.g., Starwind V2V, OVF exports)
# Step-by-step migration demo (if time permits)
# Post-migration tasks: Drivers (VirtIO), VMware Tools removal
Best Practices, Tips, and Conclusion
# Recap of key learnings
# Recommended configurations and common pitfalls
# Resources for further reading
# Q&A
Appendix: Additional Resources
# Proxmox and Ceph documentation links
# Community forums and support
# Migration guides and tools
This training session is scheduled - 1:00pm MST. We link to www.worldtimeserver.com to convert to your local time. Note that this is planned as a 2 hour presentation to provide sufficient time to cover all of the topics. To register or to ask any questions, please contact us via e-mail to experts@parsec.com or fill out the inquiry page.
Worry-Free Delivery
PARSEC Group uses Zoom to deliver our e-Learning to our customers. Zoom provides several options for connecting to the class.
View system requirements here.
Audio is provided via Voice over IP (VoIP) and requires speakers, or a USB headset.
