Hello all,
I hope everyone is doing well on this weekend. I hope that everyone had an interesting and rewarding week as well. I have been at home for two weeks and that is always good. Back on the road tomorrow.
I had some odd articles this week - like this and this. I don’t think they will help anyone else, but you never know! I also, for the first time in a very long time, installed Windows on a physical host. I do not mean XP or Win7 but Windows 2012 on an server. That was way more interesting then I thought and you can see why in this.
I updated one of my DataGravity articles that will help you, for example, search for a particular value in Office documents metadata that is stored on your DataGravity array.
My wife spent some today in The Locked Room. She enjoyed it immensely. If you are in a city that has one you should check it out. I believe they are in a bunch of US cities and a couple of Canadian ones.
But as always I have found lots of interesting stuff to share so I should get started. I am making dinner tonight, and have all day of travel tomorrow.
Have a great week,
Michael
vCenter 6 Upgrade Saga
Sorry that you went through this Chris. This is one of the things I used to do for Integration Engineering when I was at VMware. Build out a vCenter that was 2 or 3 versions old, and with time in-between the installs, with lots of new and old VMs, vMotions, SvMotions, restarts and the like. Then test the upgrade. But, for the most part, Integration Engineering doesn’t exist any longer. So in some ways, it is like you did my old job for me, and so I am glad you shared it out with everyone. It helps lots of us so thanks very much! Here is more from Chris on his VUM upgrade.
VMware Virtual SAN Caching Algorithms
Rawlinson has an article about the release of a TWP on the VSAN Caching Algorithms - anyone need some light reading? But if you want to learn about the caching that VSAN does this is how you can.
Significant Performance Improvements Come to the vSphere Web Client 5.5 Update 3
I can agree with this article in that I can see the improvement in 5.5 U3 and I appreciate it. I still cannot wait to hit vSphere 6 in my work lab as it is even better with it.
Behind the NAT: A Greenfield VSAN Deployment
Wow. I have always known that NAT and vCenter was exciting and painful, but wow. Check out Chris’s adventure.
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone
This was updated a while back - and I missed it - but this is a useful utility to have around. Find the bits, docs, and release notes.
P2V a server that’s isolated from vCenter
Here is an interesting article on doing a different kind of P2V. BTW, the web site is a little odd as it uses a two column approach that is very hard to read. Just shrink the width of the browser until it becomes single column and it will be much easier to read.
Troubleshooting duplicate Mac address or IP address in VMware vCenter with a PowerCLI command
A nice KB article about how you can deal with duplicate MAC address or IP address. It is also useful for troubleshooting other kinds of issues that IP addresses are connected too - like vMotion for example.
Log Insight 3.0: Cluster Page
Steve has an article about the cluster page in the LI Admin area, and yes, the important thing is that what happened to the Appliance page. But there is more to know as well.
Log Insight 3.0: Content Pack Enhancements
Steve talks about the changes to CP in LI 3.0. Some of these are pretty darn useful!
Minimum vCenter permissions required for vRealize Operations and vRealize Log Insight
This is a very nice breakdown of exactly what the service accounts for these apps need. It is always best to provide the necessary rights rather then all the rights by default.
vRealize Operations Manager Reference Architecture
A useful document for helping to design big and resilient vR Ops environments. This is a useful doc for people to learn more about vR Ops even in smaller environments.
Horizon Toolbox 2
I did not know this was updated until I saw this. I have not used this toolbox but it is pretty cool. Thanks Dwayne!
VMware Access Point Deployment Utility
This is a most excellent article in that he is providing us all with a utility to help deploy the VMware Access Point rather then a script.
Creating a Workflow for vSphere Tags with vRealize Orchestrator
I quite like tags. I use them to have certain VMs automatically backed up (thanks Anton), and to keep track of whom the owner or support person are, or even the provision date. But here is an article that can have tags applied programmatically using vRO.
Installing vRealize Automation 7.0
While vRA 7.0 is not out yet, here is a short 5 minute video on installing it. Pretty different then past versions. Here is more info on the wizard. Jad has a multi-part series on vRA that starts here. There is a very important part of this release that is called VMware Identity Management and Jad talks about it here. This release is pretty big!
NSX Bytes: No NSX managers listed in Web Client after vCenter Certificate upgrade
A nice story about an adventure, and if you are an NSX shop and are going to upgrade vC certs this is an important story for you.
Are you ready for containers?
I think most customers are not ready for containers. Certainly the majority of their apps are not ready. But, in many of the customers I have worked with, the bigger ones that is, who have architects, I think it may be worth someone checking out containers. Here is a little info on containers. And if you are an SE that likes to play with things that might fall into your world one day - here is some help from Paul to get ready to play. Paul also has a very nice intro as well.
Veeam Backup and Replication v9 Guest File Exclusion
A nice article about a interesting feature in the next release of Veeeam. Being able to exclude files / folders from a image backup is pretty cool.
VVol Certification for VMAX3
I think that this is the first production ready VVol storage that I have heard of. In the fine print it is not a GA release, but one you need to ask for. But they are on the VMware HCL so that is cool.
Flash, HTML5 and Open Web Standards
In this press announcement from Adobe, which talks about how they will improve what they do with HTML5, you can read between the lines that Flash is on the way out.
3 Unstructured data misconceptions every IT Pro should avoid
Jeff has some very good points about unstructured data in this article.
Nutanix 4.5 is out
I am a little behind on this. But a lot of folks I know and like are at Nutanix, and I think it a cool product so I like to share news about their updates. You and learn about 4.5 here but what I am particularly impressed about is how it is out only a few weeks after the last update. You can learn more about the Acropolis Compression and Deduplication in this release here.
Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor Best Practices Guide is now available
You can find out more here.
The unofficial VeeamON Recap
I had hoped to attend this event but was not able to make it. We get a very nice recap of everything here. It sounds like a great event that is very well run!
Nested Deployment Windows Server 2016 TP4!
Clint has a nice article here about getting Win2K16 TP4 going on vSphere. Handy. And correct Clint, I did not know you could use Veeam to edit .vmx files - cool.
Enabling RDP via GPO
As part of making my work lab more like customers I am doing some things for normal users. One of the things I did recently was RDP. It works fine when enabled and everyone is a Domain Admin. But you can do it right too. I used this article and it worked well.
Windows Server 2016 moving to per core, not per socket, licensing
This will be a minimal impact change for many of us, but also I suspect huge for some too. But find the details on this here.
Proper Testing vs. Real World Testing
This is an interesting breakdown of the different types of product testing and it has good comments about each of the different types.
How to respond to someone ripping off your blog
This important article is something that many of us should be aware of. It is an interesting read but it has some good info if you are ever in this position.
New book available soon
Frank has a very interesting sounding book almost out. I look forward to it partially as I am a fan of, and like to use FVP, but I suspect there will be a lot more in this book then that. I bet this will be a one electronic purchase and one hard copy purchase for me!
Embrace Your Inner Architect with our New Design & Deploy Courses
Some new design courses - vSphere, vRA, Horizon, and NSX. See more info here.
The Quest for the Right Virtual Home Lab Server
I know that many of us keep an eye out for useful info for our home labs. Here is an interesting one about a new processor but also, what I like is that this guy has some pretty good packaged home servers deals. Look at his servers here - I quite like the sound of them.
WTF is the Blockchain? A guide for total Beginners
I know someone who needs this article on Blockchain.
What iPad model do I have?
This was asked recently and here is one thing that can help.
iPad Pro Review
Here is an interesting review that talks about the iPad Pro. While I don’t need the Pro, I think it is very functional and useful and for the people that need it I think they will be happy indeed.
Apple Music and Sonos
Our house used to run music via Sonos. We have three zones and so it was very powerful - if my wife was home she would have one or two zones and I would have one. And if she wasn’t home I could have my music in all three zones. And very good gear and most excellent software. So when she and I become addicted to Apple Music things changed. Sonos has not be turned on for three months or more. Playing music on my Mac is pretty good thanks to my Bose speakers but not good enough. So I am happy to say that Sonos will support Apple Music on December 15th. However, I do not know exactly what that will mean. Will we be able to listen to my Apple Music in my office, and my wife listen to her Apple Music in her office or will it only support one account? We will see.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far!
Michael
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