Hello all,
I had some very good PTO in Africa and that is why I have been dark on the blog. I am back again, but as I am just back, and I have a week in a datacenter next week I need to prep for, and a webinar I forgot I volunteered to do next Thursday, so time is tight. So a short newsletter today. But you should have regular newsletters from now on for some time. I do appreciate Scott reaching out to say where is my newsletter!
I updated my HomePod article since it is now supporting Canada. I added a few tidbits to the article. I wrote an article on my recent iOS upgrade, and one article on my recent macOS upgrade. Both went well.
But, lets get started!
Michael
VMware vCenter Server 6.7.0a GA
Back on May 22 there was an update to 6.7 and you can find the release notes here. I am away from the house - again - this coming week, and when I am back I will do my lab upgrade and document it carefully. My dependencies are now covered off so I can do the vSphere upgrade and I am looking forward to it.
PSA: Before you upgrade to vSphere 6.7
In this article you can get an important reminder about your upgrade process and so it is good to see it before you do the upgrade.
Horizon 7 View 7.5 GA
View 7.4 works with vSphere 6.7 (doesn’t support Instant Clone though) but 7.5 is completely supported by vSphere 6.7. You can find the release notes for 7.5 and hopefully soon I will do my lab upgrade and document it for everyone. There is some serious scalability updates in this upgrade, and AWS support too. It looks like there is some Console upgrades too. I like the Help Desk tool and it has updates too in this release.
What’s New in vRealize Operations 6.7 REST APIs
Some good info on the new REST API features or parameters and it looks like some of them may impact your scripts or code so it is good to check out the article.
vSphere HTML5 Web Client v3.39 now out
You can find out more about this new release of the HTML5 vSphere Web Client in this article. So happy that in 6.7 they are almost finished with making the HTML5 Web Client have equal functionality.
VMware Integrated OpenStack 5.0: What’s New
This is a little old, but it is an interesting release. Lots of new features, and I love the option of VIO-in-a-box option which I think handy for learning.
IPv6 Disabled causes ESXi 6.5 to fail with PSOD
In this article you can learn about why you should not disable IPv6 on your ESXi servers. It is something I do however and have not had an issue with it. But if you are hosting more than 1 or 2 users than maybe you should not disable it.
What is ESXi Compatibility Checker
In this article you can learn a bit about using the VMware Labs fling to check your hardware and see if it is still supported by the VMware HCL. It is a little intimidating since it is a Python script so you need Python. Likely used by a few home lab people!
DRS Affinity Rules by Tag
In this article you can learn about how you can use PowerCLI and Tags to manage your DRS affinity rules. This is a German article and if your browser doesn’t translate things nice, there is an English button in the side button.
A Deeper-Dive into Fault Tolerant VMs Running on vSAN
In this article you can learn more about FT VMs that run on vSAN. Cormac has dove into this in great detail.
Prepping an ESXi 6.7 host for Secure Boot
Mike has a very interesting article about making Secure Boot work in his lab. I think this is the worst case example of making Secure Boot which makes it very good learning.
New Adventure
William is moving to a new group inside VMware and I think that is going to be very good for his new group. I used to be in the group that William is, and I can say I really liked working with Phil too. Smart guy and a great manager. In those days Integration Engineering was Customer[0] and that is an important job and I liked it a lot. I wish William great fun and very good times in his new role.
VMworld and other Conference Tips
This article is most excellent advice for people who are heading to events - like VMworld. Very good info! Thanks Edward!
vCloud Director Release History
Anthony updated his article on the vCD history of releases. Sort of cool to see the history.
First Look - Leveraging the Nimble Secondary Flash array with Veeam - Setup guide
I was talking with someone recently that wanted to make Veeam work with Nimble and I thought of this article.
Important to Veeam Users: Zip Slip Vulnerability
This vulnerability is important and you should deal with it. You can learn more about it, and get a patch, from this Veeam KB article. If you use guest file system indexing this impacts you.
Quick post - Configuring Key Based Authentication for AWS Based Veeam Linux Repository
Anthony has another good post here that will be helpful for Veeam users working in AWS.
Veeam fir Scots
This is a pretty funny post that Craig has done and it shows a bit about the components of Veeam.
Using Terraform to Deploy and Configure a ready to use backup repo into an AWS VPC
Anthony has an article on doing some interesting stuff. Not something I have tried before but good info to be aware of.
VeeamON 2018 Recap
Anthony has a recap of VeeamON in this article. It was a busy event and lots was happening. Thanks for the recap Anthony.
PowerShell script to deploy Veeam Backup & Replication
Dave has an article to install VBR using PowerShell. This script is sort of for Hyper-V but is still pretty good and I think it could be easily modified for a non Hyper-V environment.
Visio Stencils for VMware, Hyper-V and Veeam
You can find the stencils here. Nice stuff.
The 2018 Veeam Innovation Awards
You can see what companies / solutions won Innovation awards at VeeamON in this article by Jason. I know some of the winners and I am quite happy for them!
Unleash your storage with DataLabs
I need to say that I had no hand in renaming Virtual Labs to DataLabs. I think it is a silly and unnecessary change. It is also not new. It is however very useful technology that not enough customers use. You can learn more about it in this article. I too have an article about making DataLabs work in a non-storage integrated way.
Google and Microsoft disclose new CPU flaw, and the fix can slow machines down
Here is an article about more CPU flaws and yes, it will impact our performance. We really need new generation of processors that avoid the need for the fix. If nothing else, this should make it easier for customers to realize they really need defense in depth.
An Introduction to Blockchain with Mark Russinovich
A nice job talking about Blockchain, good learning in fact.
Cleaning and optimizing a Windows computer safely
This article is very important if you are going to clean or optimize Windows. Very good info and I recommend it.
Midnight is a Confusing Choice for Scheduling
Bob has a very good point in this article. Time, is one of those things that is a bit more complex if you are not careful in advance. When I used to pitch things to Change Control Boards in my customers I never used midnight for sure. Not just due to complexity, but also as I did not want to work on stuff at that time!
VPNFilter malware infecting 500,000 devices is worse than we thought
This is important for some of us and you can learn more about it in this article. Check out the list of devices impacted, and the fact the restart that the FBI suggested is not a true solution.
Apple introduces new privacy portal to comply with GDPR
In this article you can learn more about what Apple is doing to support GDPR. I have heard that this sort of shows how little Apple tracks on us.
Which iCloud storage plan should you get?
Some good info on iCloud storage options and background info. I do have a Family plan, and I have the 3.99 monthly option, and it is nice to share the storage with my wife.
iCloud Photo Library and security: What you need to know!
Someone was asking me about the security of pictures that are sync’ed up to iCloud. In this article you can get the answers to the question on security.
Everything you wanted to know about using the Mac App Store (for Now)
If you are new to the App Store on the Mac, or if you are curious about what you might not know about working with the App Store, you can find out more in this article.
How to use apps, watch movies and TV shows, play music, and look at photos on Apple TV
I am a very big supporter and user of Apple TV. In fact we got rid of cable it works so well. But if you are new to it this article will help you get started.
HomePod Canadian review: Working for the Weekend
So very recently HomePod’s were sold in Canada. I have had one for a while and like it a lot. But now they are supported in Canada I can do a few more things with mine like get news or send message. But if you are interested in the HomePod and live in Canada you can check out this article to learn more.
The best screen recorder 2018
You can learn more about Windows screen recorder software choices but I am a fan of Camtasia and SnagIt.
1Password 7 for Mac: The Best Ever
You can learn more about this new version of 1Password. I got it running yesterday and I like it a lot. It looks really good. This is the first upgrade I have had to pay for in a very long time. I did the license and not the subscription.
Updates - tvOS, watch OS, HomePod
My Apple TVs upgraded to 11.4 with no issue at all. My watchOS upgrade to 4.3.1 was an issue. I had left it at home on my PTO. It died and when I got home and charged it up, it would not talk to my iPhone at all. So no upgrade. I unpaired it, then paired it again and that worked fine, and allowed the upgrade to work, and now it upgraded great. During the new pair operation I was able to select a very recent backup and so there was no negative aspect to the break and re-pair operations.
Very ODD issue in my lab
Before I headed out on PTO I had a weird problem in my lab. On a Win2K12 DC that I was replicating into my Veeam Availability Orchestrator Lab I did the MS updates on the Source VM. Some did not work and they were uninstalled automatically. But after the restart I could not log in using my AD credentials. I had to use the admin account and it was in Safe Mode and nothing important was running. I could find warnings and alerts in the Event logs about it was all about things not running but no clue on why this all happened. I use the info in this article to disable safe boot and after that I could log in and everything was fine. However when I replicated the source VM problems occurred. I deleted the replica and created it again and all was OK. So very odd. I share this in case it might help or entertain you.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far!
Michael
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As usual, this is a great summary of posts. Thanks!