Hello everyone,
I am in Cape Town - I really love South Africa and Cape Town - for an event and I am only struggling a little. It was a 2 hour flight from BCN to FRA, and over 10 hours from FRA to CPT. But in a nice room now, looking out at a nice city and some very nice hills. VMworld 2017 EMEA was pretty good and I enjoyed it. Still going through some of the US and EMEA sessions. Thank goodness we can do that.
I recently did an article that was fun to work on with getting the Veeam Agent on Linux to work. I have also updated several times lately my article about moving to a new Mac. I do not recommend the Belkin USB-C dock any longer, and I solved an issue with viewing protected content via the HDMI port.
But, I have lots to share so lets get started!
Michael
Equifax Hack — How to protect your credit and identify if your Data was hacked
I suspect there is a few people who ready my newsletters that were impacted by this breech of trust. And the amount of info - per person - that was exposed is serious. So this article will help you confirm you were impacted or not. Plus some ideas of what to do if you were. I agree, BTW, that one year of credit monitoring is not enough and one vendor is not enough. Here is some additional material on this hack.
Managing Datastore files in vSphere 6.5
This article shows you how to solve a fairly common problem when trying to download a file from a datastore. It has some other interesting stuff too.
How to manage VMware Tools using VUM
Some useful info on how to keep your VMware Tools current - which is a worthy goal.
#vmworld #sto1770BU- tech preview of integrated Data Protection for vSAN
A nice breakdown by Duncan on some potential new functionality for vSAN. Cool stuff.
VCAP6-DCV Deploy - It’s a pass
A short article about someone’s experience with this test. Some of how they did it and what was useful.
VMware Identity Management (vIDM) for Log Insight
A nice breakdown, including where to find it and how to migrate to using it. We do need to get using it as I suspect we will have to soon enough - and not just for Log Insight too.
Monitoring Windows Services with VMware vRealize Operations
In this article you can learn more about monitoring services with vROps. It does require certain license versions but it does work well. It also requires the End Point agent which is not a huge issue at all. Very cool results are possible.
Introduction to App Defense - application security as a service
This new offering from VMware is pretty interesting but information is a bit light too. I did not have time to get a demo at VMworld. Hopefully we see more info coming out soon on it. But here is an article that seems to have the most info so far. Also, here is a video of the VMworld session on this new product.
vRealize Automation and ServiceNow Integration
And interesting article about the options for connection between vRA and ServiceNow. Some talk of the third - party help too.
Integrate Puppet with vRA 7.3 to manage Application Delivery
An interesting article how how Puppet support is integrated with vRA 7.3. I think there was a VMworld session on that too.
What’s new in VMware Workspace ONE App?
You can see the list of what is new in this article. Workspace ONE is pretty exciting stuff and interesting too.
vSphere Integrated Containers v1.2 - what’s new?
This article talks about what is new in VIC v1.2 and it is pretty good info. It really seems like stuff that will make enterprise admins happy, but yet, at the same time the developers that like containers. Here is the announcement of this new release.
AD Documentation - and VMware too!
One of the Veeam Vanguard - Dean L - mentioned to me he uses a script for AD documentation, as well as VMware documentation, and the scripts are available from here. Looks pretty cool. I think he uses it for before and after. In the past when I was PS I would have used it after I did a project. Before I start the next project I would do another run and compare to see how things changed while I was gone. This looks like cool stuff to document you lab but also in a new lab, that you are not sure about, to capture it state so you know better what you have!
VMworld US 2017 Top 10 Videos
You can find here the top 10 videos from VMworld US 2017. Important difference this year is that they are the top 10 sessions from each day. So 40 videos is available.
Cohesity DataPlatform Virtual Edition Guide
You can find a nice guide to help you with the virtual edition of Cohesity.
Sysmon v6.10
This very cool utility has been updated again. This tool, when it installs, reports significant events to the event logs - like file creation time changes, network connections and process creations. So good info to know. If, for example, you make this part of your template or build process, and have an Event Log Monitoring solution, or even a Log Insight agent, that forwards your event log info to a central tool, you will have some very useful info to assist in malware and / or forensics investigation.
Introducing Project “Honolulu”, our new Windows Server Management Experience
This article talks about a new server management experience and it looks very nice indeed. It looks like HTML5 done with the Clarity engine. But that is not possible is it? It looks pretty darn good and I look forward to learning more about it.
Supermicro Xeon D SuperServer BIOS 1.2b / IPMI 3.58 released
I saw in this article there is updated firmware for my servers at home. Not able to test the new firmware as I have a policy of not doing certain work remotely. Firmware updates is one of those - although I have done it when necessary. I really like those Supermicro small and quiet tower servers. Very nice - I have two and am thinking of buying another. Thanks to Paul for hosting this info and for letting us know the updates are available!
VMDeployer 1.8 released: Full and Fast Datastore Browser Support
This app is growing fast. The full datastore support is pretty interesting. Will need to try that!
Software Defined Home Lab
Michael has an interesting article on home labs - check it out here. Some useful info if you need an new or updated lab.
Apple’s iOS 11 has a new security feature that sure to please activists
An article that talks about a very small change in iOS but that is a good one. Yes, it makes things harder for policeman, spys, and bad guys, but the fact is that is OK. Should not be easy for them.
iTunes 12.7 Giveth, But mostly it taketh Apps and Ringtones away
If you did the update and was really watching twitter or whatever you might be surprised when you do to do app updates since you would not be able to find it any longer - see this for more info. Not a big deal for me, and the stuff I use - Music, Movies, and TV shows are still good. I do like the small stuff like how it tracks when I watched things.
Update: macOS Hight Sierra and APFS compatibility
I saw this article about APFS and thought it good to share as many of you who are Mac users will end up with APFS by default. I have an old MacBook Air that I have ran the beta on - I think in fact six beta builds before GM. It has worked well, and even the upgrade - which I did have troubles with and took two tries, resulted in APFS and no problems. It started out as a FileVault drive so encrypted and it is still. I have not noticed APFS since it was installed. It just works. They did get to practice this upgrade - even the encrypted part of it - on 70 million iOS devices and so it should work good!
Making better use of the Touch Bar
I am already very taken with the Touch Bar in my MBP. I use it for many things - I just changed the volume of my music with it while writing this. But here is an article with a bunch of other uses I did not know about. I cannot imagine buying another computer without a Touch Bar! Here is the article I did when I bought my new MBP with Touch Bar and which I have kept updated as I learn.
How to opt out of Apple High Sierra Beta
I will be doing this when I get home as I don’t need my home laptop to keep doing beta, but I realized I had no idea how to opt out. And when I figured it out I was surprised. So here is the info.
What’s the difference between the different Apple Watches?
Are you going to buy an Apple Watch now? I am. But there is three of them to choose from and a lot of feature differences among them. This article can help with understanding the differences.
Face ID: Why you should not be worried about iPhone X unlock
A well done article about Face ID. If you are thinking about buying an X, it is definitely worth a read. I am not buying an X, but am certainly getting an 8, but it was still interesting reading.
53 billion devices at risk for invisible, infectious bluetooth hack
This article is a little less than ideal, but it does touch on something important. If you use old devices, or even newish ones that you never update, you might have an issue. And this issue is quite interesting and powerful. But if you use new or newish devices, and keep the OS current you are in a better position. And that is true about a malware attacks. And, if you don’t use Bluetooth, then maybe it should not be on.
Apple’s September 12 announcements
I was able to see this announcement, not live mind you, but it was worth watching. I have a bunch of links for you in case you want to learn more. Here is an overview by Wired, and one by Tidbits. Here is the Apple links for iPhone X, iPhone 8, Apple Watch 3, and Apple TV 4k. Here is an article about should you buy ceramic or stainless steel Apple Watch. Here is one article about hands on with iPhone X. The purchase I am quite excited about is the Apple TV 4k, as well as the GPS enabled Series 3 Watch. And I do like the sound of the iPhone 8 as well. We will see since if I get the new Apple TV I will actually have to buy a new TV too. BTW, the iOS, and watchOS updates are out on the 19th, and the macOS on the 25th.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far,
Michael
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