Newsletter: July 30, 2017

Hello all,

I hope that everyone has enjoyed the weekend so far.  For us it has been a lot of very hot days which makes working in the lab less than ideal.  Spent a bunch  of time in VMC and I must admit I quite like it.  I see a lot of possibilities.

I did a PowerShell and docker article so I could do some PowerShell on my Mac, and I think I will add in a tool to graphically manage the docker images - so watch for that article.  I have had some questions around what is in some of the fields in a Summary screen in Veeam Backup & Replication and so explained that in this article.  BTW, here is a short video on a very funny skit on support.  I suspect many of us will recognize parts of it.  I hope you smile as much as I did.

In last weeks Word from Gostev there was some good info that I need to share. There are important ReFS patches on the way and you can find out more in this article. If you have a smallish ReFS partition you probably won’t have an issue but in the bigger ReFS partitions  you may have issues so these patches are important. There is another patch outstanding for ReFS but things are looking much better. Anton has a most excellent newsletter, and if you support or work with Veeam software you should join the forums and you will get his newsletter.

But I have lots to share, and less time then I would like, so need to get working.  Have a great week everyone,

Michael

vSphere 6.5 Update 1 now GA
I heard about it via Duncan and this article.  This is a big release - a fair number of new stuff, and a lot of fixes.  Some of the configuration maximums have been enhanced too.  Here is the vC release notes, and the ESXi release notes. I have updated two labs - one with vSAN and one without.  The VCSA updates were easy and smooth - but remember to reboot it.  As well, in my vSAN lab - shortly to not be mine any longer - the host upgrade was a little different, as there is new vSAN baseline which is quite handy.  In addition, after this update I had outstanding hardware firmware updates. Getting the upgrade done, as well as the firmware updates took a surprising amount of time to get done.  No outages though.  But easy to do.  Be aware of the red and yellow warnings for vSAN during your upgrade. So no outages, and no issues with this upgrade.  And my tools all still work - like Veeam, and View.  You can learn more about the release in this article.  Adam has some good info on this release under the hood.  The vSphere Client is also updated and you can learn more about that in this article. Update: the firmware update via vSAN is not working.  I have done it several times, and I see hosts restarting but no upgrade seems to occur. I am using Dell R720 hardware with the Avago Dell PERC H730 25.45.2.0001 firmware and the new firmware is 25.5.0.0018. I am now trying to do the management bit first.  Nope.  Nothing works - no upgrade works for the controller firmware or the mgmt VIB.  Next step is support I guess. Hope no one else has this issue.

ESXi 6.5 host fails with PSOD when IPv6 is disabled
In this KB article it talks about how you can have a host die with a PSOD when IPv6 is disabled.  And, in both my labs I have disabled IPv6 on my hosts.  But, fortunately I do not have any PSODs.  I think that this bug may need something else to trigger.  Like maybe high processor usage in a VM.  Not sure what though but I am not having an issue.  I note that it does not get solved in Update 1 of 6.5 - or maybe it does and the KB article will get updated soon.

Completely Automated ESXi Deployment
Want to know how to automate ESXi deployment - in some detail? You can learn how in this article.  This is not for everyone.  I think some may want to use PowerCLI, and others should use Auto Deploy.

vSphere Content Library versioning
When you are using multiple CL, in particular maybe one in VMC and one inside your company office - it is very good to know the replication state.  This is a great way to move ISO and bits up to the VMC cloud.   But if you want to cheek on the status you can.  CL’s have a versioning system that is quite handy for troubleshooting.  You can find out how in this excellent article from William.

ESXi 6.5 storage performance issues resolved in Update 1
Anthony has an article about a fix in U1 that will impact many of us home lab people!

VMware Cloud on AWS - Predictable Capacity Provisioning
Frank has a nice article - about purchase cycles and about predictable capacity provisioning which is possible in VMC and is in fact pretty cool.

A closer look at performance improvements in vSAN 6.6
A nice TWP on  the performance improvements in vSAN 6.6.  Nice stuff.

vRA 7 & NSX 6.3 - The Security Tag Gotcha
This article talks about a chicken and the egg issue when working with vRA and NSX and when you have VMs that you are deploying and require services during setup - like AD.  Good info as I bet it was a little frustrating learning about this!

Integrating Log Insight Alerts into vSphere with Operations Management
Kyle has a very good article about how you can integrate Log Insight alerts and vRealize Operations.  His example of an alert when SSH is in use is a great one.

Introducing “Operations” Dashboards in vRealize Operations 6.6
Nice intro to the Operations dashboards in vROps.  Powerful tool, and greatly improved - and changed - in 6.6 so it is good to get some help with it.

New TWP - Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 6.5
A new TWP to help you get all of the performance out of vSphere that you might need. By default vSphere is fast.  But there are improvements in design you can exploit to make thing fast more often.

Three New VCAP Design Certifications Available
I saw this article and I wonder what it means to me?  I find lately there has been some confusion with VMware Education on what is my responsibility.  However, I did find this site and it shows everything pretty nice.  And it looks like I need to do another test.

Exciting lineup of VMware Cloud on AWS sessions at VMworld 2017
Here is a list of sessions on VMC so if you are thinking of working in VMC they would be a good way to learn.

Deployment Projects in Veeam ONE
Here is a nice article that will help you understand more about the functionality in ONE can help you plan for future growth in your environment.  Good stuff.

Mapping an existing Veeam Agent for MS Windows
If you have Veeam  Agent backups, but want to move them into the Veeam Backup & Replication repository so that you have your backups all in one place, and have more options you can do this.  Find out how in this article.

Looking for the Perfect Dashboard: InfluxDB, Telegraf, and Grafana - Part VIII
Here is an article that does monitoring of Veeam using - not PowerShell, but rather the RESTful API that is part of Enterprise Manager.  A good example on the use of the API.

Veeam RESTful API and Postman
This article talks about how you can use a REST client to explore an API - in this case the Veeam REST API.

Veeam Information points
A nice collection of information around Veeam.  If you are new or not new with Veeam this might be good to check out so you know the possible options.

Veeeam-Surebackup-vCenter
A script that you can use for SureBackup job tests, and also Veeam Availability Orchestrator tests too.  It can be used to confirm that vCenter is working.  I need to play with this myself!

Installing phpIPAM on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS - Control of IPs, VLAN, VRF, IPv6
This article is about an IPAM solution that is free and useful.  It has been recommended as very handy in a home lab. I had heard good things about the Solarwinds free IPAM solution but I learned recently it does not handle many IP addresses so that is an issue.  This phpIPAM scales much better!

Dell iDRAC 6 Remote Console Connection Failed
I do like problem and solution articles and this one is about iDRAC 6 issues and I hope that no one has this issue but if so you know have the answer!

The fight against tech support scams
Have you had someone run a tech support scam against you? I have, and quite enjoyed irritating them.  But if you want to learn more about this sort of thing here is a good article.

Scaling Data Locality
I saw a very interesting article on data locality.  I hear this term a lot - especially lately and I hear a few different definitions too.  So it was good to read Edwards article.

Another day, another blog hack - how to scan and protect your WordPress blog
An interesting article about things you should know about your WordPress site if you get hacked.  I have hosted WordPress so I cannot do any of this, but many of you host your own WordPress so this is good info for you.

Deploy Software Quickly
I have heard very good things about PDQ Deploy lately and thought I would mention it in case you need to push out a script or whatever to a bunch of workstations.

How to Remove Raw Images from Apple Photos and iCloud
Some good info if you want to remove Raw images from your library.

Thanks for reading or skimming this far,

Michael

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