/Luciano Patrao

About Luciano Patrao

I have over 20 years of experience in the IT industry. I have been working with Virtualization for more than 15 years, mainly VMware. I hold VCP DCV 2022, VCAP DCV Design 2023, and VCP Cloud 2023, plus older certifications including VCP6.5-DCV, VMware vSAN Specialist, and an old MCP. I have been a vExpert for 11 consecutive years, plus vExpert vSAN, vExpert NSX, and vExpert Cloud Provider. I was a Veeam Vanguard from 2018 to 2025. My specialties are Virtualization, Storage, and Virtual Backup.I am a Senior VMware and VCF Engineer at Leaseweb, working on enterprise virtualization, cloud, and storage infrastructure at scale. I am also an analyst at GigaOm.I am also a blogger and owner of the blog ProVirtualzone.com, an Object First Ace, and a book author.

Building a Nested Proxmox VE Cluster for Veeam Migrations: A Step-by-Step Guide

I recently set up a Proxmox VE cluster in my lab using VMware as the base. My goal was to test Veeam migrations and understand how Proxmox handles features such as failover and storage. I did most of the work through the command line because it gave me more control and helped me learn what’s [...]

By | 2025-06-03T17:18:58+02:00 June 3rd, 2025|Hypervisor, Proxmox, Veeam|0 Comments

Migrating Workloads to Azure VMware Solution with VMware HCX: A Practical Guide

Based on my hands-on experience with VMware HCX, I recently spent several weeks researching Azure VMware Solution (AVS) as part of planning for a possible project with a financial services company. The customer has an on-premises VMware environment with 500 VMs across multiple clusters that they want to migrate to AVS, driven by the goal [...]

By | 2025-05-13T16:29:58+02:00 May 4th, 2025|HCX, VCF, VMware Posts|0 Comments

VeeamON 2025: My Recap and Reflections

The VeeamON 2025 in San Diego was another fantastic experience, and this one felt extra special to me personally. As a long-time Veeam Vanguard, this was my fourth (or maybe fifth?) time attending VeeamON, and it never gets old. It is always a pleasure to connect with the incredible Veeam community, catch up with friends, [...]

By | 2025-04-29T19:49:21+02:00 April 29th, 2025|Backups Posts, Veeam|0 Comments

My Veeam Vanguard Journey: A Decade of Grit, Growth, and Gratitude

My journey with the Veeam Vanguard program began around 2015 or 2016, sparked by a blend of curiosity and ambition. Fresh from applying to become a VMware vExpert, I was eager to explore another community initiative. I’d been working with Veeam products since 2007 or 2008, so the Vanguard program felt like a natural next [...]

By | 2025-04-15T22:39:54+02:00 April 15th, 2025|Backups Posts, Veeam|0 Comments

Cleura Cloud: A European Cloud Alternative

This is my first blog post about European public cloud services. With all the issues we have seen since the beginning of this year, this is an important subject for organizations operating inside the EU. So I am starting this series on European cloud providers with a deep dive into Cleura. The Need for Change [...]

By | 2025-04-04T17:23:13+02:00 April 4th, 2025|Cibersecurity, Olher|0 Comments

How to Upgrade from CentOS 7 to CentOS Stream 9 (The Complete Guide)

Even though this isn’t the kind of post I usually write on this blog, I think this is something worth sharing. Since I needed to reuse my old CentOS 7 jump host VM for a new project — installing Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization (a blog series is coming soon) — I had to upgrade it to [...]

By | 2025-03-31T17:50:55+02:00 March 31st, 2025|RedHat - Linux|0 Comments

How to reset the root password on VMware Cloud Director on v10.6

In this quick blog post, I’ll go over how to reset the root password on How to reset the root password on VMware Cloud Director on v10.6. There’s been a slight change compared to previous versions, so here’s what’s new. In earlier versions, we used the pam_tally2 command to reset failed login attempts. However, with [...]

By | 2025-03-30T17:25:26+02:00 March 30th, 2025|vCloud Director, VMware Posts|0 Comments

How to migrate ESXi installation from an SD Card to a Local Disk

Migrating ESXi from an SD Card to a Local Disk: My Experience Recently, I was experiencing some issues with one of my ESXis 8.x that I installed on a 25GB SD card. After troubleshooting, I realized the SD card was failing. I had the choice of repairing it (which I had done a couple of [...]

By | 2025-03-29T00:01:21+01:00 March 29th, 2025|VMware Posts, vSphere|0 Comments

VMware Cloud Director 10.6.1 – What’s New and How to Upgrade

It’s been a while since I last covered VMware Cloud Director here on the blog, but after spending the last couple of weeks working intensively with vCD and NSX, I decided it was time to revisit it. In this post, VMware Cloud Director 10.6.1 – What’s New and How to Upgrade, we'll explore the key changes [...]

By | 2025-03-24T23:27:00+01:00 March 24th, 2025|vCloud Director, VMware Posts|0 Comments

Celebrating 10 Years as a VMware vExpert: How Community, Blogs, and Saying “Yes” Changed My Career

From Reluctance to a Decade-Long Journey This year, I celebrate my 10th anniversary as a VMware vExpert—a milestone I once never imagined reaching. I hesitated to apply for years, convinced my contributions weren’t “enough.” Back then, my world revolved around Experts Exchange, where I spent countless hours answering VMware, Veeam, and Windows Server questions, amassing [...]

By | 2025-03-05T00:47:17+01:00 March 5th, 2025|VMware Posts|0 Comments