Hello all,
I had the pleasure this week to visit Veeam customers in Pittsburgh and I love that. So a very busy week, and what a lot of fun. But as a result I have less to share. But next week or two at home and I have started a number of interesting articles so something to look forward too (for me and you).
Recognizing innovation is something we are going to do at VeeamON this year. You can see more about that in this article that Anthony has written.
BTW, I have updated my HomePod article with some extra info and links. I am very happy with it and look forward to it being supported in Canada.
I am doing some additional VAO articles and the product is shipping so make sure to check back now and again and see if there is anything that can help. You can use RSS, or you can subscribe to my blog, or you can check things via this tag.
Have a great week,
Michael
Disable DRS for a VM
Duncan talks about how you can disable DRS for an individual VM in this article. Good info as I have had to do this long ago and my way - rules - was not so good.
What You Can (and Cannot) Change in a vSAN ReadNode
A co-worker is getting a new lab soon, and I am working with him on it. Pretty fun and I am looking forward to building it out. But as part of that this article is sort of handy in case we have to make changes. You cannot change just anything in the Ready Node world. And when I build out labs, or build out infrastructure for customers, I like to update everything and make sure it works good. That has to be different with Ready Nodes, and no updates for controllers unless the Compatibility Guide changes. And vSAN itself helps with that now too.
vSphere HA Restart Priority
Duncan has another nice article about how you can exploit the HA restore priority functionality. Good info.
vSphere automation with vRealize Orchestrator
You can learn more about this area in this article. It also talks about vRealize Automation as far as how vRO works with it.
If you own vCenter Server, then you own this too…
A very good point. If you own vCenter, you have a legal copy of Log Insight and it is a very useful tool. In this article you can learn much more about it and get it going too.
Quick-Start Tutorial for User Environment Manager
This technical introduction is a good way to get started with UEM. This is a powerful and interesting tool that really provides an admin with serious ability to improve, and manage, a user operating environment.
Resources for Getting Started iwth VMware NSX
Melissa has some good suggestions about how you can learn about NSX. One of her comments is one I quite believe in too - read the admin guide before you read the install guide.
VMware Cloud on AWS Base Reference Architecture for Managed Service Providers
You can learn so much from Reference Architectures. And this article does have some good info. I have met and chatted with a number of customers that are thinking of using VMC, often for BCDR or Test / Dev, but I have not talked with any service providers who plan on using it so I found it interesting.
No, vCloud Director is not dead.
An interesting article actually with a lot of detail. I was in the meetings - maybe just one, where the demise of vCD was planned. I also heard how that was not going to happen. I only installed vCD a few times - and yes, it was hard, but I used vCD a lot. I made a lot of things possible because of what I could do in vCD. It is a great tool.
Windows 2016 Deduplication
In this Veeam Technical Paper you can learn a lot more about Veeam and Windows 2016 dedupe. I am actually a fan of ReFS and use it and have not used dedupe. So it is good to learn more and this paper will definitely help.
Restore from a cloud provider with Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows
In this article you can learn more about restoring files and volumes from a cloud backup. It is quite interesting info and good to know if you have some Veeam Agents for Windows in use.
ReFS vs NTFS - a three part series
If you are still not using ReFS for your Veeam repository - which I would be surprised if you weren’t - you can learn more about ReFS and Veeam in this article series - part 1, part 2, and part 3. BTW, I wrote an article about using ReFS. Not so much on the math or performance but in the how.
Setup Faster and more Secure DNS resolution with CloudFlare
You likely heard this week bout a new global DNS - 1.1.1.1 and you can learn more about it in this article. Faster and more secure is good. I have heard very good things about CloudFlare so this is also sort of cool that they have done this. BTW, here is the CloudFlare announcement.
Under a millimeter wide and powered by light, these tiny cameras could hide almost anywhere
Wow. These are very small cameras, and I love how they are powered by the light that strikes the lenses.
AD Overview Graphical Tool: Active Directory Domain Services Section
I have been playing with this script today, and I really like it. Very interesting and useful info it provides. I suspect it could even be used as an audit tool to learn about a new AD infrastructure when you meet it for the first time. I made the mistake of trying to use it on my personal desktop. It does need to run on a DC.
My Journey to Nutanix Platform Expert (NPX) #014
In this interesting article you can see what the author went through to become first a VCDX and second, and in more detail an NPX. Interesting stuff actually and some good tidbit if you want to be an NPX.
Louis Vuitton’s Luggage Tracker will tell you if it lands in a different country
This article talks about this new ‘feature’ of the luggage and it turns out it doesn’t use GPS so that is interesting. I think maybe it will only tell you the country it lands in and not the airport.
Facebook Just Made a Shocking Admission, and We are all too exhausted to notice
If you are interesting in the silliness with Facebook this article will bring you up to-date. So happy I don’t use FB.
Inside China’s VAST New Experiment in Social Ranking
The title of this article is about something that I definitely don’t like much - social ranking never works out well. But China is giving it’s very best though.
What is Free Speech in America Gets People Jailed in France and Elsewhere
This is stuff I have thought about before. Things I see in the US or Canada vs. what I see as I travel the world. For example, I almost interfered in Jordan when a child was harshly struck repeatably by their parent. In the US or Canada I could have easily done something about that but in Jordon there would have been a small riot and I likely would have died. This article talks about something a little different, in how free speech in the US means you stay out of jail but elsewhere in the world you would be in jail. So many Americans I know actually think their country is the best in the world. But they have trouble saying why. Freedom of speech is pretty good and maybe a part of what makes the US special?
JPMorgan Brings Amazon’s Alexa to Wall Stree Trading Floors
I thought that this was interesting. Using Alexa to get answers to questions you might normally ask a broker. I had an Echo Plus for a while, but after I played with it a bit, it was gone. Not really what I need or like but it was definitely cool.
Backblaze Announces B2 Compute Partnerships
This is really big news and pretty interesting. Backblaze now has some interesting compute partnerships. So if you have data in B2 Storage and you want to do some analytics on it that just become easy and you don’t pay to move the data to compute. People have been skeptical about what I pay for my Backblaze backups for my three Mac’s but it is due to the fact they invented storage so they could have better costs, and better functionality. Very good to hear how things are going well for Backblaze.
SolarWinds, Not Just On-premises, There is SaaS too
In this article you can learn more about what SolarWinds does as SaaS which is quite a lot and interesting too.
MyFitnessPal shows how to handle a Breach
It is quite interesting to learn about how a software company handled a data breech professionally. Very sad it is so unusual to be so interesting when it happens. But there are other good points in the article - like complex passwords that are different for each site you connect with. The author of the post works for 1Password and says they have the best customers in the world, but what should be added is that it is due to a great product and wonderful people who work at 1Password.
Best drawing apps for iPad and Apple Pencil
I saw someone drawing recently in the Notes app and it was pretty interesting. I know someone else who likes to doodle with the iPad and Apple Pencil. When I saw this article I was surprised at how many apps there were mentioned as the best.
Apple Strikes Back at Google with Education Initiatives
This article sums things up nicely WRT the Apple education announcements of late.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far!
Michael
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