Hi all,
I hope everyone is doing well? Good New Years celebrations I hope? Things very good here. Home for almost a week and that is nice. I have a bunch of stuff for you today but also something new. I am going to add each week a short software review that I think significant. Normally it will be small but it might be bigger sometimes. We will see how it goes. Got something different and interesting for today.
I wrote up an article on the Meltdown and Spectre stuff. It should make things a little more clear. As well I looked at some very cool software - which I need to get into my lab - called Uila. Also did an article on an odd issue I had upgrading my Veeam console. I also added the link to the Veeam entry in the VMware on AWS compatibility guide in my article on VMware on AWS and Veeam. We not only work but are certified now too. One of the recent updates to my Jibo added in the ability for it to play music - so I updated my article on the subject. My macOS upgrade to 10.13.2 on two Macs was a problem. That story has been updated in my article - but the short version is that that the re-install worked on both.
This week I was on the Virtualization and Cloud Security Podcast with Edward Haletky - which is a lot of fun - and you can find out more in this article.
As I was making breakfast Saturday my wife was telling me about an airplane incident that happened overnight. It did not turn out well, but it should have. So I had to write about it in this article.
But, as always, I have lots to share so lets get started.
Have a great week,
Michael
VMware Horizon 7.4 now GA
You see in the the release notes but there are some interesting new things - like Session Collaboration and new OS in the Linux space but not sure if it feels like a major release or not. There is a nice list of resolved issues though.
Log Insight 4.5: Alert Enhancement
Steve talks about some of the alert enhancements in 4.5. I am partial to the fact description AND recommendation is in the alert now.
Quick Tip - NSX-T 2.1 upgrade gotcha, use NSX Manager IP address vs. hostname
William has a good tip in this article. I bet it frustrated him before he figured it out!
How to upgrade datastores to VMFS-6 in vSphere 6.5
A nice article that tells you why and how of the VMFS upgrade which is not an upgrade. It is for that reason that I do not have VMFS 6 in my lab yet.
How long does it take to … Enable vSAN Encryption?
This is one of those questions that is clearly dependent on so many variables you cannot help but say it depends. But Jase says that so much nicer in this article.
Monitoring MS SQL Server Performance with Wavefront Metrics-Driven Analytics
In this article you can learn how to to do some amazing full stack monitoring of your SQL server and tables. I think the granularity could be amazing. I played a little with Wavefront and it was cool. I did not do a great job testing it as I had no apps I could use with it but it was still interesting and I could see the power.
GDPR and Addressing Data Security
In this article it talks about GDPR - so good and simple / clear info on that, as well as how VMware products can map to help. GDPR is first about process and knowledge, but technology can help a lot once you understand well what is going on.
Reclaim dirty free space in Windows by comparing Windows to vSphere reported free space
This interesting article may help you reclaim ‘free’ but still marked as used from your VMs. It needs to be carefully tested mind you, and not in production. But if or when it works, I think it might be pretty handy.
Diving Deep on the Foundational Blocks of VMware Cloud on AWS
Some not very deep but good info on what an SDDC in VMWonAWS is composed of.
VMware Cloud on AWS with NSX: Connecting SDDCs Across AWS Regions
In this article you can see how the author has SDDC’s in different regions and how both are connected together, and both to his on-prem lab. Pretty interesting and I suspect useful too!
SecureBoot and the 2017 iMac Pro
An interesting article where the author has really investigated SecureBoot on the new iMac Pro. I really like Secureboot in VMware and Windows so I guess it makes sense that Apple would add it. I suspect we will see it on all the future Macs.
Replication 101
Michael has an interesting article on replication from the point of view of Veeam - nice info, and it is the start of a series so should get even better.
Veeam Availability with IBM Spectrum Storage integration for fast, efficient backup and recovery
Michael - in another article - talks about the new IBM storage support in Veeam 9.5 Update 3. It is important and very useful for customers to have the option to do storage related backups. Why - Performance, and less impact on production virtual machines.
Merry Christmas - Disaster Recovery with Veeam
An interesting Christmas story and I think we all can learn from things when they don’t quite go right! Thanks for sharing!
Veeam Agent for Linux 2.0 is now available - backups to Cloud Connect and much more!
Jorge has a nice article on getting the Veeam Linux agent to work and has a nice chart to show you the differences between Free and not free. I really like how there is a console, but also full CLI support, and that it now can backup to the cloud. I should think a lot of Linux people should be happy and impressed.
Upgrade to macOS 10.13 fails on VMFS5+ with SSD devices if SATA controller is used
If your upgrade to 10.13 in a macOS VMware ESXi hosted VM fails this KB article might be able to help mitigate.
What technologies to follow and learn in 2018!
Michael shared out a link to this article that is pretty interesting about future trends and in fact I agree with most of them. Good stuff to think about.
1Password keeps you safe by keeping you in the loop
I have used 1Password for a long time, and I know a number security professionals who do too. In this article 1Password explain why they will not do auto fill-in. It is a good example of why I like the company and the product so much.
BeyondInsight & Retina CS 6.4.4: New Dashboard, Analytics and Reporting Enhancements, More
Long ago, in my professional services days, I often used software called Retina to do security scans for customers. I quite liked it. So I was surprised to see this article about a new version. Pretty cool to see it is still around and the update is interesting.
High Sierra ‘Content Caching’ turns your Mac into a local iCloud server
I shared some info on this subject before, but in this article there is more info. If you have a few kids with iOS devices, and a spouse, and maybe some macOS devices then this is good stuff. The article also sort of references this Apple support article which is also interesting.
Pixelboard - a small review of software
This app is a sketching app on the iPad. It is pretty good and certainly better than some. It has no shape library mind you. It does export to Photo’s nicely. It has a nice feature that any writing or drawing you do disappears after after a few seconds. But the real impressive feature is that you can connect with other users - up to 9 in fact, and sketch together. It requires something a little tiny bit odd in the firewall but on the same network is pretty easy and useful. I used it with my wife’s iPad and it worked really great. I used Messages to send a link to her, and she clicked on it and it was done. After that point anything she drew, I saw and vice versa. Handy. It is new and has a big discount so it is only 9.95 CAD in the App Store. Which means it is like 5 bucks US.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far,
Michael
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