Hi all,
First thing is Happy Canada Day to everyone. Not quite a birthday but when Canada become more Canada (or Dominion of Canada in those days). As well, on the subject of birthdays, Thursday was the 10th birthday for Veeam which is pretty cool – and they were added to the Gartners Leaders Magic Quadrant for BU / DR too. Pretty nice!
This week was busy for me, and part of that was the article about a backup issue, and one about Veeam and syslog. Any Veeam B&R technical article will have this tag, which I hope makes them easier to find and browse. One night while my wife was out, I worked with a very cool search appliance. It is specifically designed to work with more than one vCenter and it allows you to search for almost anything but it also surfaces for you a bunch of useful info. It is called vSearch and more can be seen in this article.
Another reason this week was busy, was I wrote the Veeam Certified Engineer test. It was pretty good, and I passed too! The studying for it was cool as I got to learn and try out things I do not normally do – like dealing with the Explorers for SQL / Exchange / Oracle and dealing with the backup / replication testing called SureBackup and SureReplica. Pretty amazing features actually – and yes, some of it is in my lab now and that is quite cool! But, in any-case, I meant to say if you work with Veeam as a customer, or as a partner, I do recommend you studying for and taking the test it is worth it!
While getting ready for this newsletter, I saw the the Top vBlog 2016 results. What a great list of blog authors! I know and read many of these blogs. You could not do wrong if you started reading one of them you have not seen before. The only one in fact I have not read many times is the one in 25 spot, which is My Virtual Vision. So this list of 25 is most excellent as a reference. If you want to learn more about our industry pick one and you will learn. As well, the blog authors should be strongly congratulated as they have worked very hard indeed to be where there are! I would like to mention that Duncan, William, Cormac and Frank have maintained there top ranking and that too is most impressive. As you might image that means there blogs are pretty darn good!
While I was looking at the Top vBlog 2016 results, I stumbled across the full vBlog 2016 results . I was very proud to see I was at spot 38, up from 59 last year. Thanks very much indeed to all of the people that voted for me. I much appreciate it – it means a lot to me. As well, I want to say congratulations to everyone on the list – it has taken a lot of work to get there! Also, thanks very much for Eric for doing all the work!
But lots to share, so maybe I should get to it!
Have a great long weekend – handy that both Canada and the US have long weekends this weekend.
Michael
ESXi host performance issues and the importance of thermal paste
Frank tweeted out this article – which is more than a year old, but is very worth reading. It talks about a very odd problem and so that is useful, but also the process is pretty important and useful too. So very worth reading.
Tag-based Veeam Backups
Rob has a most excellent article about using vSphere tags to organize his backup strategy. This is a most excellent idea! He has gone through it in detail using PowerCLI to make it easier and very powerful. Most excellent idea and a very good implementation. Thanks for this Rob! I am a big tag user. I quite like it to keep track of when VMs were provisioned, who is the app owner, or app support person, and what is the primary app on the VM. Very handy when you have your VMs organized this way. And than adding a tag to help manage which VMs to backup, or not backup, and the configuration of the backup is very cool. BTW, here is his first article about using vC tags with PowerCLI.
Right-Sizing SSO Domain
Chris has a nice article about right-sizing your SSO domain. I understand why Chris choose option 2, but I also agree that 4 may have been a better choice too.
Changing your Default VSAN Storage policy
This article talks of how you can change your default VSAN Storage Policy and I think that is pretty handy. I think you should have a good default that works for you as sometimes people may not use a Storage Policy when they deploy a VM. I wonder if we will see a way to block that one day? I must admit in pre VSAN 1.0 – I pushed for the functionality of changing the default policy as for many workloads I did not use a policy. I don’t now who is the author of this blog – other then his name is vsanteam but he (or she) has another article on how VSAN handles power outages that is good to understand.
VSAN permanent Disk Failure Detection – Health Status vs. Hardware Status
A nice article with a problem / solution thing but also some important info. A disk issue that was flagged by the VSAN Health Status tool (love that tool) but not anywhere else. So a good story to read as some variation of it might impact you one day. The morale of the story is the Heath Status app is damn useful.
New Fling: DRS Doctor
Matt talks about the new fling – DRS Doctor in this article. Wow. Pretty darn cool – my fav section is Audit. Very handy indeed if you need to figure out why something happens!
DRS Advanced Settings
Some great info on the DRS settings that are something good to be reminded about now and again. So here they are!
Increase the performance of your Veeam Backups in network mode
This is quite interesting and in fact for some customers and home labs I think pretty useful! A nice way to make a noticeable improvement in your network mode backups – which – unless you are all 10 GB should be plan B, and not your plan A.
Project Cava, Dogfooding the vRealize Suite
Bryan has an interesting article about how they are using vRealize Automation to help them develop vRealize Automation. This was started in a basic way while I was still at VMware and it impressed me a great deal. It sounds like they have improved it a lot now.
vRA and NSX – Part 1, vSphere Prep
This has the elements of a great blog series – Jad, vRA and NSX. Here is the first part and I bet it will be great learning!
Deploy and Configure VMware NSX in 23 minutes
This is quite a feat! But it does involve an amazing script! Check out how to do this here.
SRM Re-install Required after vCenter 6 re-install
This is a good article to know – a PSC was not replicating so vCenter had to be re-installed, then SRM need to be re-installed. Good info.
Let’s talk about weather…. in Log Insight
I have seen something else like this but I was not able to find it. So here is an article that can help you incorporate temperatures into Log Insight. If you have a thing for knowing what the weather is in a variety of places, and want to see what the trend is, wow, is this article good for you! This is a great example of what can be done in Log Insight!
Why #VMworld (2016 US edition)
Here is an other article about why you should attend VMworld. It does have some good points and thus worth sharing. VMworld is a great place to learn, and that is important, but also important it is a very good place to network. I also like having VMworld in Las Vegas. I find it very efficient, and I like very much heading out into the desert for hiking – which I will do as much as I can! I just did my registration – have you?
VMware Homeserver – ESXi on 6th Gen Skull Canyon Intel NUC
This looks like a very nice home lab server. So small / quiet and yet powerful. The fact it has Thunderbolt 3 is pretty powerful! And solves the issue around limited networking.
Why the future of the Digital Workspace Hinges on Identity Management
A read of what VMware is looking at in terms of EUC – Identity Management. They do have quite the story, and you get some of it from the article. It has some links for more info too.
Why are Login VSI Results Import For Evaluating VDI Solutions
I have heard about Login VSI a lot and I hear that is it a useful tool. So it was good to see this article about using it.
Force the Invoke-Restmethod Powershell CMD to use TLS 1.2
This is a good article from Cody that will help when you want to use PowerShell with the newer Pure OS (Purity) that forces TLS 1.2 usage. But it is also good if anyone needs to force TLS 1.2 (or even 1.1) in your PowerShell world outside of Pure. Thanks for this!
Capacity Remaining Badges in vROps – know when your database will be full
Catchy title actually. I mean, vROps telling you when your DATABASE is full? Pretty cool actually. Find out how to make this come true for you here. You know as well as I that Blue Madora is involved – right?
Datanauts 039: The Silo Series – Resource Allocation for Virtualized Workloads
This is a good podcast to learn more about resource allocation. This is one of those areas that many people do not know as well as they should – present company included on that – and so it is a good resource to learn more!
Nutanix .Next 2016 Summary
A nice breakdown of what happened at the Nutanix big event. They seem to be able to grow their technology very quickly – which is pretty exciting.
Veeam and Win2K12 Dedupe
Someone was asking me about this subject. I know it is a good idea (in some use cases), and know people that do it. They had googled and found lots of old stuff and were not sure. I said it was in fact a good idea, but you had to do it right. I suggest this slightly older KB article as a good starting place. One small change for v9 is to use the per VM backup chains – this is set in the Repository Advanced config. Plus if you are a large company it is not worth doing this, as for example with Win2K12 files bigger than 1 TB will cause issues. This story will need to be adjusted for Win2K16 as it gets much better for using as a Backup Repository (with dedupe) but it may mean different configuration is required too. I suspect with Win2K16 one of my co-workers at Veeam will do a very nice paper on how do to this successfully.
NTFS, dedupe, and the ‘large files’ conundrum
An interesting article that explains why on some of what is in the Veeam KB article mentioned above. Good background info if you are going to use dedupe in Win2K12.
Dedupe in Windows Server 2016
A good read – that I have shared before – but it does detail dedupe and how it changes in Win2K16.
Get on the Magic vBrisket Bus
My very good friends at vBrisket came up with a great idea. A bus ride from Chicago to VMworld in Vegas with interesting stops along the way, with very interesting people aboard. For the full details check this article out. What a great opportunity to mingle with other people that share your interests. I think this is a great idea and I am very happy that Veeam has sponsored them. There are sponsorship’s still available …
Royal TSX
Got Royal TSX working. Free via vExpert, and it is really something. A tiny bit complicated to get going, but once going that is not an issue. And it does – for me – PowerCLI, SSH, and RDP. Plus it has a lot more plug-ins, and ones coming like VMRC. JumpDesktop is what I actually bought and have been using for a long time. It doesn’t do all TSX does but it is much easier to use and it does a very nice job replicating its setting among all of the machines I use it on.
Free Tool – Privileged Account Discovery for Windows
I have not tried this tool out but it sounds very useful. Run it to find any privileged accounts in your domain. In your AD or I think in your desktops. Pretty cool actually and you should check out their sample report produced from the tool.
This Wearable is a Cure for Motion Sickness and Changing My Life
If you suffer from motion sickness, or know someone who does, this is quite the article.
Part 2: How to build a Windows PE and Nano Server image to deploy Nano Server at scale
This looks like an interesting series. How to do Nano at scale! Find Part 2 here.
PluralSight and the Apple TV
I quite like PluralSight and appreciate very much how it is part of vExpert so thanks vExpert! But I asked PluralSight about an app for the Apple TV and it turns out they already have one. Thanks to those that clued me in. You can find all their different apps here. BTW, it works great on the Apple TV!
Use iCloud Drive or iBooks to access your PDF / ePub and books
Someone was curious how I download a product guide on my iPad in iBooks. All the VMware, Veeam, PernixData, and more docs are on my iPad. Or rather on my iMac and in my Cloud. And if I have not used one, like the other day, I can pull it down to from the cloud really easy. This surprised someone. This was a change in iBooks at iOS 9.3. Use this to find out more. BTW, this is quite handy. I like, when I am working in the lab, to have the product docs very handy – even when no internet, and this is a very easy way to do that. Most vendors do .ePub docs so that makes nicely done. I love those indexes!
Thanks for readying, or skimming this far,
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Notes from MWhite 