Hello all,
I am in transit to VMworld and very excited about it. So this newsletter will be a bit small. I plan on doing some blogs onsite about important stuff. Already thinking about the first one and how to do it.
I tried to do a Domain Controller upgrade to Win2K16 (from Win2K12 R2) and it was a disaster. AD would not run. It was so interesting, if I could get support I would have. But instead I restored my domain controllers. So one was non-authoritative and one was very authoritative but it worked great and all is back. I have a great article on how to do the upgrade but it will have to stay unpublished until I can make sure it can work! At a customer site, I would never do this, but I have limited licenses for Windows so I should do it this way.
The Android VMworld app has been out for a while, but it was only Wednesday that we could get the iOS one. Find any of the apps via here. It is a nice app, but I sure wish I could integrate it with my calendar so I don’t have two places to watch.
Are you a first or second timer at VMworld? You may find help or interesting info in this article, or this one or even this one! All good info.
If you cannot make it to VMworld, but are still curious about what happens, check out this article.
I really look forward to meeting you at VMworld!
But lets get things started!
Michael
VMware Runs on vSAN
My good friend Ken has an article about how VMware uses vSAN inside VMware. It is quite amazing in fact and I believe it helps improve vSAN too.
GoodBye, vSphere Web Client!
This good news was shared just recently, but it is good to hear. The vSphere Web Client - and it is in fact very useful currently - has had some serious growing pains. The vSphere Client - the next gen HTML5 client has been growing fast and it is taking over. And good news too! I heard in the twitter-verse - but found notconfirmation anywhere - that at this time vC on Windows would be depreciated. I have not used the Windows version for a long time!
vSphere 6.5 Upgrade Considerations Part 3
In this article, Emad is continuing his story on upgrades. And it is good info and worth reading. One thing I would add, is that when you have your plan I look to see how I can simplify and make it safer. So sometimes that means I do upgrades of things like View or SRM to the latest if that works. So I am doing some simple little updates or upgrades before the big ones. Sometimes that can help minimize the outage window.
Announcing VMware Fusion 10 and Fusion 10 Pro
I remember when there was no Fusion, and when it came out. It has come a long way! Here is the 10th version info.
Prevent vRealize Orchestrator Lockouts
If you use vRO you likely need to check out this article! Rob has had some technical issues lately so has had some good articles!
Improving workload performance with DRS and vROps v6.6
DRS and vROps working together are a pretty powerful combination that many customers are not using, or are not as aware about as they should be. This article is a nice introduction. I think if you area customer reading this and are not familiar with this stuff you should ask your VMware partner about it. If you are a VMware partner, you should think about learning more about this cool stuff.
PowerCLI, vCheck, and vCenter SSL / TLS Secure Channel Errors
Another very interesting article about something that may impact a bunch of us. If you are getting some errors referencing certs this article may help - especially if you see them in vCheck.
PowerCLI Support Breakdown
It was very cool to see this article as the previous day I saw questions and comments around what support do you get with PowerCLI. Thanks Kyle!
vSphere Upgrade Saga: NSX in 8 Easy Steps
Learn more about doing NSX install in this article. Interesting stuff.
NSX Identity Firewall - Deep Dive
It is really a very deep dive in NSX stuff! Really nicely done! Wow.
VMware OS Optimization Tool - New App Volumes Packaging Machine Template
Even if you are not a App Volumes person this article may still be interesting. The OS Optimization Tool is very powerful and can help you tune an OS before it becomes a template. I found it to be very powerful, and very easy to make mistakes!
Digital Badges on vSAN and vROps
You can learn more about the new digital badges that VMware has for vSAN and vROps. Both subjects are simple on the surface and yet a little more complex underneath.
SQL Server 2016 Helps with Best Practices
In this article it talks about how SQL server 2016 helps with some good things and that is pretty handy. Especially when I am not a serious SQL guy at all.
Tips for Passing your VCDX
Some great suggestions in this article but also good things to think about when doing designs for customers!
Uila - A view into your Data Center
An interesting article about some new software that sounds a little unique. If I see them at VMworld I will check them out.
Wading through AccuWeather’s Bullshit Response
You may have heard that AccuWeather was sending your location info to marketing people even when you disable it. Here is more info. I suspect that Apple is investigating now as this should be, and I think it is, against some of their rules.
NexentaStor supports automatic UNMAP
If you are using Nexenta for your storage - like I am - it is cool that is supports automatic UNMAP in the iSCSI world. You just need to enable it in vSphere and you are good. If you want to learn about how to see if UNMAP is working for you check out this article. While learning this, I learned that if you have an all - flash array you can get help from Nexenta Support to enable TRIM operations. I think Nexenta is an amazing choice for home labs - you can find out here how I installed it for me lab.
How to recover a domain controller
As I mentioned above, I had to recover my AD environment. Normally I would not suggest or encourage, restoring an AD Domain Controller, but, certainly when both / all of your DC’s are dead, restoring is pretty handy. Normally I only use the AD DC backed up image to pull out a bad password replacement or a deleted GPO object but in this case restoring both VMs was handy. This article has the info on doing this. Important - when you have two or more - to do all but one as non-authoritative and do one as authoritative.
Automatically create Veeam backups using vCenter MOREF IDs
This is a very useful article that can be used in automation work - such as when you have a provisioning system and want VMs to be backed up after being provisioned. Quite interesting. I wonder if tags would be useful here?
GitHub explained for product managers
A nice explanation of GitHub, which I am trying to learn more about and having some issues with making it work.
How some Thunderbolt 3 Cables underperform with USB-Only drives
An interesting and detailed article about a potential issue in USB-C device with a Thunderbolt 3 active cable. Not sure if I have active, or passive cables actually!
The End of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is Nigh
I wonder if any of you are using older Mac MS Office? If you are you may need to check this out. I use the Mac Office 2016 version and am pretty happy with it.
CrashPlan discontinues Consumer Backups
This was a bit of a surprise to me. I used to use the software and quite liked and had even talked with their people at VMworld. So definitely surprised they are not doing consumer backup any longer. See more info in this article. BTW, I went to BackBlaze and strongly recommend it. BTW, they have an article that compares different home backup software. But I use it, and really like it, and backup three machines with it and I have been using it for more then a few years. Here is a third party article on alternatives to CrashPlan.
Curious about the aerial screensavers on your Apple TV?
You can find out where the pictures are from and all the choices.
Here’s what Siri will and won’t do on the Apple TV
I was curious about what Siri could do and I have been playing a bit and then I saw this article which answer what is possible.
Luna Display first look:
I use Duet to have my iPad as a second monitor when I travel. And I hear the new Luna is many times better. Here is a review. I will be checking it out myself.
Apple Watch battery issue AND fix
I have an Apple Watch Series 2. Quite like it. It normally lasts two days or a little more on a charge. Very recently it was barely lasting a day. I thought it might be one of the updated iPhone apps that had a watch presence. So I removed all the new ones. No change. Talked with Apple support and they said do a hard reset. That day was still poor but not too bad. The next day was back to the at least 2 days and in fact maybe more. So remember this if you have an Apple Watch that all of a sudden exhibits radically different battery time. The hard reset is hold down both the button and the dial on the side - both down at the same time - for 10 seconds and a hard reset will occur.
Thanks for reading, or skimming this far!
Michael
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