Hello all,
I hope everyone has had a nice week? Enjoying the weekend? Was a busy week for me. More repercussions from my wet ceiling. In my past I have a few customers that lost portions of datacenters due to water, and now I need to add to that list the water damage in my world too. When I first saw it, I immediate wished I could fail it over to somewhere (with Veeam Availability Orchestrator). But I do not have a DR site. So it is very good I have backups!
vSphere 6.7 dropped this week and I talked about it in this article. It is always important to read the release notes and compatibility guides so you can learn if there will be a negative experience of upgrading or not. In my case, I have my backup software (Veeam) and Horizon View that are not yet supporting vSphere 6.7. So upgrading is not good. BTW, here is an article to watch about Veeam supporting vSphere 6.7. Here s a good article to read that has important info on the 6.7 upgrade. BTW, I downloaded vSphere 6.7 using VSM which you can learn more about in this article.
I have recently updated my Restaurants page. When I find restaurants in my travels that are particularly good and I want to visit them again, or take my wife to them in the future I record them in my Restaurants page. A good resource!
BTW, I really love my HomePod. It works great, even in Canada where it is not officially supported. Since it is not supported I cannot do things like send texts, but the typical stuff I do like music / weather / time / date all work great. I have not even thought about using SONOs in the last few weeks. I love how it can play my playlists, or just simple play all of the music for an artist that I ask for. Very handy too how I can simply say Hey Siri, I like this song, and that improves the recommendations. I am very happy with it, but also, I look forward to the future - when it does multi-room support for example. Also, I heard someone recently saying no stereo in it was a problem. I went from SONOs connected to a stereo in my office to a HomePod. It sounds great - stereo or not - to me. And I will buy more when they are in Canada and can support multiple rooms playing the same thing.
Have a great week!
Michael
vSphere 6.x: VMXNET3 and DirectPath IO issue
In this article it talks of an issue from long ago. However, I heard about it as it was causing performance issues for someone recently and when I checked I had a whole bunch of VMs with DirectPath enabled too. The theme seemed to be newish VMs. I don’t think this caused me any issues but I am not sure, but I am glad I know about it and was able to disable the offending configs.
New VMware Configuration Maximum Tool
This is a cool new tool that William shares with us. Definitely an improvement.
What’s New with vSphere 6.7 Storage
This article does a nice job of detailing the long list of new features and enhancements to storage in 6.7. Quite a list!
Introducing vSphere 6.7 Security
Mike has an article that does a great job of describing the security enhancements in vSphere 6.7. There is some amazing improvements under the covers, and even some in the UI too. I love the changes around enabling VM Encryption.
What’s New in Core Storage in vSphere 6.7
You can find some great learning in Cody’s article series on vSphere 6.7 core storage. You can find part 1 - In-guest UN-Map / snapshots, part 2 - Sector Size / VMFS-6, and Part 3 - Increased storage limits, and there will be more so keep an eye on those articles - each has a table of contents.
Nested ESXi 6.7 Virtual Appliance Updates
William has released his 6.7 nested ESXi OVA files and that is pretty handy. A great way to test or play with 6.7 before you can actually upgrade. You can download it from his article but also you can get it via Content Library and I think that is the best way to do it.
Status of vSphere 6.7 support by VMware VM backup companies
Paul has an article on the status of the backup market with respect to vSphere 6.7. This is one of the important things that you need to check before you upgrade. And, BTW, Veeam always tests the GA bits over again in QA just in case things changed - which they have before - so we may not be the first available, but we will be the one that really does work.
The Dell EMC Customized ISO Image of ESXi 6.7 is now available
And I think that this was pretty fast but no matter, at least it is out now.
VMware PowerCLI 10.0.0 poster
You can find this very useful poster which is good for the wall, or even just on your local hard drive. It has lots of useful info on it.
vROPs 6.7 - How to create a scoreboard interaction without XML
Without XML has a wonderful sound to it! Find out how in this article.
vROps vMotion Super Metric
This is a nice article to do something I have been asked before and did not know how to do. I am hopeful that one day we will see this as a widget or something like that.
vROps 6.7 - adding colors to metrics using the view widget
I know - or used to know - a lot of customers that had vROps in a monitor up on the wall where everyone could see it. Adding colors to metrics would make things stand out nicely. Good to know how to do this thanks to this article.
Log Insight 4.6 now GA
Recently Log Insight dropped (release notes) and it has a number of cool things in it. The dormant host alert is pretty handy and there are some other improvements as well. My upgrade went as smooth as ever.
Log Insight 4.6: Dormant Host Alert
It is most excellent in 4.6 that you can set an alarm on a host that was reporting but is now not reporting. Very handy. Learn all about in this article. I think I remember asking the Log Insight team for this a while back.
Troubleshooting Application Consistent backups in Veeam
I had to do this recently. Some things to remember - make sure your credentials work, and in my experience they should always be the local administrator account. Make sure you can RDP to the VM and use those credentials. As well, Veeam has this article, and this one to help. But of course, if none of this helps, call support!
Simplified remote access for home labs and offices with Veeam PN
Anthony has a nice article about using Veeam PN for access to your home lab. Very useful in fact, and I am trying to find time to use it as an emergency access to my home lab.
How to avoid typical misconfigurations when setting up Veeam
Veeam Support has an article that talks about some things to think about when you are first starting out with Veeam.
Cloud Connect subtenants, Veeam Availability Console and Agents
Anthony has an interesting article about some interesting Cloud Connect technology that I bet is pretty useful for service providers.
Installing the Pure Storage plugin for Veeam Snapshot Integration
You can find out more info on this new plug-in and how to make it work in this article.
ReFS Supported Deployment Scenarios Updated
In this article you can learn about the recent changes around ReFS and the supported options. It makes a lot more sense now. I do like ReFS and am very glad about the changes.
AWS Directory Service - Simple AD
This article talks of interesting functionality in AWS for directory services. Good to have options.
Enhancing conditional access with machine-risk data from Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection
In this article Microsoft talks of some sophistication security tools working together. Being able to detect malware and being able to block that infected machine from corporate resources. Powerful stuff. But would like to evaluate it before it was implemented in my world!
Announcing Windows Admin Center: Our re-imagined management experience
You can learn more about the new Windows Admin Center - formerly known as Project Honolulu - in this article. Sounds good! This is why I am working at upgrading machines in my lab!
Storage at Microsoft
This very unusual and interesting article is about a migration service that Microsoft has. I had not heard of this before but it does sound interesting. Need some help with migration - this could be it. But OMG, you better test it well first.
Become a certified Cisco engineer for only $49!
This article caught me by surprise but it seems like a useful deal - Lifetime access to the Cisco courses for only 49$. That is if they are the actual Cisco courses.
Thoughts on Product Management
Ben has an article on product management that is interesting.
Nutanix AOS 5.6 Released
You can learn more about the most recent AOS update in this article. There is quite a list of new things, and some of them pretty interesting - like micro-segmentation, and NFS support. In this article you can learn more about this update including in Prism.
Use Multitasking on your iPad
I believe I shared this article a while back but a few people have needed it lately - including me. Good info and great functionality.
Personalized Hey Siri
This article about Siri is pretty interesting. A lot of technology is behind it.
The Science of VDM: the Plan
Edward has an interesting article that talks about the back-story of the Virtual Design Master program, or the science behind it. We also talked about it and it was very interesting and fun chat. This should produce some real design stars as this is hard stuff!
Happy Birthday VMware!
I am a little late on this, but definitely I wish you the very best on this 20th birthday VMware. See this interesting timeline. I was at VMware for almost 7 years and I enjoyed it a great deal. I was luckier than most as I was able to work in a variety of departments and ended up working in R&D for the last year or two. I met so many interesting and smart people, I really considered myself very lucky. I loved introducing people to vMotion, Log Insight, SRM and virtualization that worked and worked easy.
Thanks for ready or skimming this far,
Michael
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It is an excellent site. Thank you for your work and the many interesting topics. Can you tell me if there is a script (Powershell), with which you can also backup a PSC. For the vCenter, there is that. Works very well. However for a PSC I could not found this script.
Hi Tobias,
Backing up PSC is one of those things that is somewhat odd. Meaning you can redeploy them very fast and easy. I also suggest you do not backup VCSA or PSC using PowerCLI but rather use your normal backup methods so that in a crisis you have all your backups in one place and use the same methods and tools to recovery. BTW, I wrote a paper about backing up VCSA and PSC and you can learn more about it in that paper. https://www.veeam.com/wp-vmware-vcenter-server-appliance-backup-restore.html
Michael