Hi all,
One of the more exciting things in this short week was finding out I was #31 on the Top vBlog 2017. I was 38 last year. So that is a big deal and I very much appreciate everyone voting for me. I will continue to do the very best I can to bring value to people that read my blog. Thank you for both reading, and voting! If you want to check it out the other people here is the big list
I missed the newsletter last week due to a long weekend - and some PTO - in the mountains (BTW, the lodge was one of the best so I recorded info about it on my Adventures page, which has lots of good info on that page). A very good time and definitely what I needed. I have done some articles though - here is one about VAO, and one about a problem I had creating a Content Library.
I wrote a technical white paper (TWP) on using VMware VM Encryption along with Veeam Encryption (found here). The web guys did not like my title of Nothing Ever in the Clear, so they called it VMware’s VM Encryption Implementation Guide. But it does cover off lots of technical info on both VM and Veeam Encryption. And yes, it is a TWP, but it is also gated. Very sorry about that. Not cool but that is outside my control. Comments and questions and even suggestions are welcome about this paper.
BTW, not sure who mentioned this, but I tested. Veeam PDF are indexed by Spotlight (on the Mac). So that means you can search for something inside Veeam PDF files as you search the rest of your hard drive. Very handy. While I tested that, I also was reminded that PowerPoint files are also indexed too. And since it works for Spotlight, and while I did not test it, I do believe Windows should also be able to index and search them too.
As you might guess, I have lots to share! Lets get started,
Michael
Top vBlog 2017
This most interesting event surfaced again recently. The video for the top 25 is here. Some great blogs are referenced in that video. Congrats to all of them, but particularly to the people I know - Andre, Anthony, Cody H, Chad, Scott L, Vladan and William. Very well deserved. You can find the full list in this article. The top 25 has some very good blogs on it, and I suggest any of them are worthy of getting to know. And the big list has many great blogs on it. And all the blog names are links so that make it easy to explore. Much thanks to Eric Siebert for doing all the amazing hard work. And congratulations to everyone on the list - I know how much hard work it took to do the work that encouraged people to vote for you!
Exploring the Awesome New vRealize Operations 6.6 HTML5 User Interface
An article about the new UI in vROps 6.6 - which I can confirm is pretty nice! The article has a link to the video list about 6.6. This is a good intro to the UI.
Can you use the management IPs as the isolation address for HA?
Duncan has an interesting story, which he investigates and learns that it is a bad idea. I suspect he had the suspicion it was a bad idea but very good he tested and confirmed. This has happened to me at times, hear something from a customer, and think it is a bad idea, but have to test to confirm and find it is in fact a bad idea.
Deploying a new HyTrust KMS on vSphere 6.5
Cormac shows you how to deploy a HyTrust KMS - which is pretty easy actually - and I quite like the HyTrust KMS as I used it for my encryption TWP. Great info Cormac.
vSphere 6.5 Update 1 - What’s in it for Service Providers
Anthony has an article about the important stuff in U1 for Service Providers. This is definitely a big deal for anyone, but it is a good list for SP’s too.
Curious about the HTML5 Client functionality?
You can learn a lot more about the HTML5 client functionality at this page. You can see what is supported and what is not.
Announcing the vSphere 6.5 Topology and Upgrade Planning Tool
Some of us like to do upgrades - the research, sometimes the testing, fact checking, and the actual upgrade. But others are less familiar and can use help - and VMware has a cool new tool that can help. Find out about the Upgrade planning tool in this new article from Adam. I will give this tool a try next time I do an upgrade.
How to find NVMe SSD firmware versions in a VMware ESXi 6.5 Server
A nice article on how to find the version of NVMe that is installed in your ESXi server.
The Art in the Architecture - The vSAN Object Object Store
A great read to learn more about vSAN.
vSAN 6.61 with VUM Integration
A very interesting article from Pete on how you can use VUM to do vSAN upgrades. This will make vSAN upgrades much easier! BTW, here is an article from Cormac on what is new in 6.61 - some good stuff. I think my fav is the VUM integration.
VMware ESX 6.5 U1 and vSAN 6.6.1 Lab Upgrade
A nice story of a lab upgrade to 6.5 U1. There is an issue with a firmware that I experienced too.
New Release: VMware PowerCLI 6.5.2
An article that talks about the next update to PowerCLI and was it ever fast to market. The fact is that with the new method of distribution / upgrade / delivery for PowerCLI it means - it looks like - that they can get quicker to market. BTW, I did the upgrade and was it ever quick and easy. Even gave me something to watch!
Log Insight: Ingestion API versus Agent
Good info on agent vs. the API from Steve. I wondered about this myself. I really like how the agent on Windows can capture full events and provide them to the API so that in a search I can see a Windows event that is much bigger, and more info, then syslog could have submitted via syslog.
vRealize Automation 7.3 Distributed Install - Prerequisites
I hope to be doing some vRA work soon, but I saw this article about the pre-reqs for a distributed install which is a fair bit more complex. So good info.
Scaling a vRA 7.3 Environment (Part 1)
A nice article about understanding how to scale vRA to be a distributed environment. Some nice eastern Europe humor too!
vRealize Automation API Samples for Postman
A nice article on vRA and the API. It can help you get started. I like how the API has progressed in the last couple of releases.
VM Deployer 1.5 Released: VM Power Management, Deletion, and Regular Expression
This most excellent tool has been updated again so remember it if you need to deploy an OVA and want it to go smooth!
Get the most of your VMware alarms with Veeam ONE
You can find in this article that Kirsten talks about the alarms in ONE. A nice overview. Hopefully her next article is about how to tune alarms that happen a lot - like latency alerts!
Veeam Availability Suite Unattended Install
If you want help doing an unattended install of Veeam Availability Suite this article will help.
Consuming the Veeam REST API in PowerShell - Part 1 - Starting a job
A very interesting article about using the Veeam API via PowerShell. Really a good start accessing the REST API that is part of Enterprise Manager.
Attention: Your backup infrastructure is under attack
An article about the potential danger that your backup infrastructure is under. Some good info.
Use vCloud Director LDAP authentication with Veeam self-service portal
Luca has a nice article on how you can use your vCD authentication, when it is LDAP, for your Veeam authentication as well. Very good info actually.
Veeam Backup transport modes - all you need to know
A nice breakdown on the different Veeam transport modes. I use mostly Direct NFS and really like it, and Hot Add as well for everything else. The prevalence of 10 GB also means you could learn that the slow old NBD is in fact very fast indeed on 10 GB.
Microsoft announces Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Microsoft has an interesting release - a version of Win10 for workstations - that is discussed in this article. And I saw something about SQL on Linux recently. Very good stuff out of Microsoft in the last while.
Sponsor sessions at VMware events: if you build it right they will come
I completely agree with this article and I think it is a good time to share it out again. Again I have seen some VMworld sessions for later this month with product marketing people that are in fact very good product marketing people but poor technical presenters. I am not blaming just VMware but other companies too.
Microsoft Active Directory Replication Status Tool won’t upgrade
This article describes an issue I am sure others will be impacted by! This tool looks pretty interesting.
Deploy and update existing drivers via WSUS the smart way
An interesting article that will help you deploy OS drivers via WSUS the smart way. Good info if you use WSUS. And a good help with security since you are not just updating the OS but firmware as well.
Automated Zimbra Install
I used to have Zimbra in my lab to provide email services. I quite liked it and we had it for a bunch of years at work too. But, at some point Zimbra decided to not do an OVA any longer. So I stopped using it. But I was told about an automated install script and you can find it here. Pretty cool. Thanks to Jorge for sharing this.
Will Killing Net Neutrality End the Public Cloud?
This is a very important article, and I believe the author of it has some very good points which I agree with completely. And this is not something that just my US readers should think about because this will impact people outside the US too. And if it ‘works’ in the US it will even be implemented elsewhere and that will be bad for us all.
FLARE VM: The Windows Malware Analysis Distribution You’ve Always Needed!
Thanks to Scott Bollinger I found this most amazing tool. You navigate to a specific URL and you get a variety of important security tools installed. Yes, sounds too good to be true but check out this article. Very interesting stuff.
NOTPETYA: First strike in a Cyber War?
Tom has a good article about whether or not cyber warfare can be responded to with war. I too saw the article that suggested it could and started Tom thinking which lead to his article.
QNAP keeps quiet on critical flaw that corrupts data
RAID is a respected way to protect data and so this sort of bug is interesting. QNAP should have in fact shared more info when they released the patch. In my past I have done a lot of RAID rebuilds and never did I corrupt or lose data.
Apple’s 10.5-inch iPad Pro Aims for the Sweet Spot
This article says a lot of technical comments about the 10.5 iPad Pro and I quite agree that this is the very best iPad I ever owned.
iOS 11 helps you shoot photos straight from the heart
This interesting article is about the next release of iOS which should be out next month and it is pretty interesting. Some big changes coming for taking pictures! I am excited about iOS 11 for what it will do for my productivity on my iPad but this camera stuff is sort of interesting too.
TripMode
This Mac app (yes there is a Windows version too) will block a network when you first connect to it, and then ask to let each app use the new network. Think say yes to everything on your work or home network, but very selective when tethered to your phone, or in the hotel. There is a lot of background activities - Dropbox, iCloud, ONE drive, iPhotos, iTunes, and so much more! Not sure if anyone remembers that Location Manager tool from long ago? This reminds me of it. I have not tested this app yet, but it should looks good, and I think I will get a copy of it.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far,
Michael
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