Hello all,
I hope that this finds everyone doing well? Enjoying the weekend, and too the past week? I had a pretty good week and got a lot of things done. I have finished a DR strategies white paper and it should be on Veeam.com soon, and my VM and Veeam Encryption paper has turned out well and is in edits now so it should be out soon too. I have been helping out with VMC and AWS stuff and that has been very interesting!
I did get an article done about using external Content Libraries with your own Content Library and does that ever work good! BTW, I have recently been working with CL and all my complaints are gone - they are in fact ready for prime time. I updated my primer on them too. I also had an odd problem and so wrote it up too! BTW, I have updated my Moving to a new Mac again with some unpleasantness around my Belkin dock. I also tweaked my vSphere Best Practices. You can always see what I change at the bottom.
I had a meeting with a co-worker Friday, and I mentioned it was the first day of Calgary Stampede and he thought that sounded interesting - so I shared a little about it. It is quite the time in Calgary and if you are curious this may help.
So I do have things to share, and so should get started.
Have a great week!
Michael
Add multiple ESXi hosts to vCenter Server using PowerCLI
Magnus has an excellent article about using PowerCLI to add hosts to a vCenter. I have shared in these newsletters I do enough PowerCLI scripts to do the full deploy / install I think!
vSphere 6.5 Upgrade Considerations Part-2
Emad has a nice article that talks about what you should think about for the organization and getting ready to do your upgrade to vSphere 6.5. Nice outline.
vSphere Upgrade Saga: HPE Management Updates
I love to read about upgrade articles, and it is interesting to read this one where the saga was all in the HPE management tools. It is too bad that Edward had to go through these issues as they sound like things that should not have happened.
Mixed version of ESXi hosts in the vSphere Cluster?
A nice discussion of the things to think about and worry about when you are going to have a mixed cluster. Good info.
VCSA 6.5: The mysterious dependency on the IPv6 protocol - part 2
This interesting article shows some useful troubleshooting, as well as good testing. I have not turned of IPv6 on the VCSA and now I won’t. I do in fact do that on my ESXi hosts.
vCenter Appliance root partition 100% full due to audit.log file not beig rotated
In this KB article - which someone had to use recently - it shows you how to fix this problem. In fact to deal with the full space, and to fix the password issue that causes this problem. As part of my vSphere Best Practices you are reminded to deal with this potential issue in advance of it happening. You should set a reminder to change it before it expires or set it to not expire.
vSphere HTML5 Web Client v3.16
This is a big update - and it adds in a lot - such as Content Libraries and support polices, and even some improvements around Distributed Switches. Find out more in the change log. I followed the team and did all the updates and was pretty excited at how quickly it grew, but once I was at 6.5 I stopped doing that. Now I wonder how quick the new stuff in the fling gets into the GA code.
vSphere Web Client in 6.5
I am a pretty big fan of the vSphere Web Client. It took a while to happen but I work a lot in the lab with it, sometimes for a long stretch, and there is a lot to like. I heard people complaining about it recently but when I asked they had not looked at the Web Client since 5.5. They were unhappy no vSphere Client. So lots of complaints, but when I showed them the Host Client they were in fact impressed with it. When I showed them some of what I liked in the Web Client they were surprised. So I guess it is time to share my article about what I like in vSphere Web Client again. It is an old article, but is still all true, and you just add the fact that vSphere Web Client 6.5 is faster!
What is VMware CPU Ready?
A good breakdown of what CPU ready is and how it is important and how to track it. Good basic info.
Book Review: VMware vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive
A very nice review of this book and what a book it is. You can learn a lot from this book so I too quite strongly recommend it to anyone that wants to learn more. It will help you build better systems and understand them better too.
Part 9 - Using data roll-ups for longer retention in vROps 6.6
Even by default vROps generally retains data for longer than vCenter does so that is quite a benefit of using vROps. But in this article you can learn a little about tweaking the retention.
Learn all about vROps REST notifications and REST API in 60 minutes
This is a short but interesting article and a video where the real learning is. If you want to learn more about the REST API of vROps this will get you started.
vRealize Log Insight - Tracking SSH logins to edge devices
This is likely the shortest article but it is a cool query.
How to Deploy and configure VIDM
Here is an article on how to get VIDM working. This is important - to Log Insight users - since AD is deprecated in Log Insight. This is actually a good thing - think about it, you configure the VIDM, and then all or most of the VMware products use it to do the connection to AD. Sort of good for VMware and us I think. We are in early stages so it only works for a few software packages but it is a good start. Thanks very much for doing this Steve!
Monitoring vRA with the vRA Health Service
This is cool functionality in vRA 7.3 that can help you be proactive in your management of vRA. Always a good thing!
Horizon 7.2 Help Desk Tool
I remember after I did my 7.2 upgrade I checked this out and it is pretty darn cool, and quite useful. See this article for more info on the new Help Desk too.
Get Ready for VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Cloud
This is only a press release but it was a bit of a surprise. Definitely good for customers.
vSAN Encryption, vSphere Replication, and SRM - it just works!
This is of course no surprise, as vSAN Encryption is quite low level, but I can see how competitors would play it, and how customers with little or no experience would assume. But GS has the story.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 1.5 beta
You can get involved with this beta via this link. This is a big new version that will be fun to test. It has an architecture to empower a lot in the future and some nice scalability improvements in this beta. There is also an API and PowerShell support too. One thing I heard a few customers ask for was multiple repository support and that is there too.
Would you like to learn a little more about Veeam Backup Statistics?
You can learn quite a bit by reading this message thread.
Veeam Availability Suite Unattended Install
In this very nice article you can learn about unattended install and configuration!. This is very cool and I can see it being very useful for partners. Not just because it is fast, and easy, but because it is always consistent too. And I want to try it out next time I build out my lab!
Veeam: Monitoring Veeam Backup & Replication with new Content Pack for VMware Log Insight
A very nice article on getting the CP installed and into use. Very nice breakdown - it is in Spanish but Chrome translated nicely and very quickly.
Before and After ioFABRIC Vacinity
This article about the test of ioFABRIC is pretty interesting. It is a fascinating product that I had not heard of.
ASUS Launches NBASE-T Adapter at just 99 US$
This most interesting article heralds for all home labs - 10 GB networking. Very nice indeed. Now we just need to make sure the drivers get to VMware and Windows!
HyTrust hits 4.0 for DataControl and KeyControl
I am a fan of HyTrust, I have dealt with a number of the people at HyTrust, and I use their Key Management System and I quite like it. This version 4 adds in additional OS, browsers and hypervisors to the support list. The performance increases are pretty good too. Here is the release notes, KeyControl bits, admin guide, and a quick start guide for VM and vSAN encryption. I should mention I used their KMS for my VM and Veeam Encryption technical paper that should be out soon. It worked great.
Five great SQL Server GitHub repos That every SQL person should check out
Saw this article recently and thought that it would be good to share. There is a lot of SQL use out there and some of these scripts seem handy!
Managing SSH Server Security with Puppet
I have played with Puppet in the past and quite like and one blog I like to watch often talks Puppet and security and it is often very easy to follow. See the article to help with your SSH security.
You are not Google
I can identify with this article as it is something I have seen a lot of. People that think they need to work towards what Google or Amazon can do. But their business model is nothing like Google or Amazon. Look at the facts, figure out the problem, understand the possible solutions and pick the best one for you. UNPHAT for the world!
The Encryption Layer Cake
An interesting article that does a good job breaking down where all the encryption options fit. Also good suggestions too - something to think about as you do need to be careful about encryption.
Are you prepared for a DDoS? Why the worst is yet to come
An interesting article of DDoS in APAC and how it is going to get worse this year. I fully expect all malware to get worse this year and continue in that way for a while. DDoS is going to get worse too but I think we will see more of it tied to malware in the form of blackmail. I think it will continue to be used for corporate espionage as well as manipulation of companies and events.
Enterprise Architect vs. Solution Architects vs. Technical Architects
I heard someone talk about architects and it did not sound quite right. But in this article I think it is the best definition I have seen which explains what different types of architects are in our industry.
Will DR and BAckup power AHV sales to 50%
Dwayne has an article about some of the DR changes from the recent Nutanix event. Some nice changes!
Why Roman concrete still stands strong while modern version decays
I thought that this was pretty interesting so I hope that some of you do too. I have seen some amazing old Roman built up areas and I had not thought to wonder why they still stood. But now I know!
Thanks for reading or skimming this far!
Michael
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