Hello all,
This is likely going to be out late. I have spent 6 days in a row working in a data center, to do something pretty simple stuff but yet it has not turned out that way. It is important work, and it will impact many of you so I work hard. So not much time to do my newsletter and yet I have a lot saved up for it. Before I headed out for this work, I did start the process of vSphere 6.7 in my home lab. Not finished but there is a nice article for you in the works. I spent some time on the upgrade and hit a number of issues. The last one was a surprise and not solved yet. So this article - and upgrade - will take a bit longer.
BTW, I have updated my recommended restaurants page and so I wish to remind you of that page as it talks about some very good places to eat.
By the time I get this out I will also need to say Happy Fourth of July to all my US friends. You are a great neighbor and I wish you all the very best.
But lets get started, I know you have a need for some reading material, and I need to get some of my articles out so the list gets back to a workable size! BTW, I have taken a stand and will not normally share out articles that have no date on them. There were several - including some interesting VMware EUC ones I wanted to share but no date so no sharing.
Yes, I know I got this out late. Sorry about that but it has been a very busy time for me. And yes, this is a big issue, but some very cool things to share!
Michael
Spectre-NG - CVE-2018-3639 and CVE-2018-3640
This article talks about additional Spectre vulnerabilities and the patch / KB info. The article has good info and links.
VMs get corrupted on vVol datastores after vMotion
You may have seen this article before but it was updated recently. It is not good news for vVol users!
New Rollup Bulletins Simplify VMware ESXi Updates
In this article it talks about how in the future you will get VMware patches as you do now, but also a rollup that is a collection of patches. It is nice that I can keep doing my patching as I like, but yet have an option to do it differently if necessary.
The value-add of NSX Data Center Compared to Open Source Solutions for Cloud Native Apps
Wow! What an in-depth and interesting article. Very well done and full of good info on a very interesting part of the market. It also makes a very strong point - that I quite agree with and am not surprised either.
The Summer of NSX
Melissa has a great list of reading material - all around NSX and in different languages too!
vSphere Upgrade Series Part 1: Preparing to Upgrade
Nigel has the start of an article series on doing vSphere upgrades and in this first one he talks about preparing. I like how he tells you what his lab is, and how it will be a journey so lots of info to share and learn from, plus opportunities for you to ask questions!
vSphere Upgrade - FAQ’s Now Available
You can learn here about the new upgrade FAQ that VMware has. It has a lot of good stuff in it, and more than I saw last time so they are adding to it.
What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.7
This TWP talks in detail of the new features in vSphere 6.7 and is a good way for you to learn more.
Understanding the vSAN Witness Appliance - Cluster Membership, Versioning, and hosting
Jase has another very useful article that you can use for learning more about vSAN Stretched Cluster. Very good info!
vSAN Backup and SPBM polices
John has an interesting article about backup and vSAN. I have been asked about that before too!
Enhanced VM Data Mobility
In this very interesting article Alastair talks about how vVols support and enable VM mobility. Very interesting and good to know. A different way to think on vVols and something I did not know previously.
Cost Insight helps a VMware Team Cut Spend on AWS by 30%
This little article has some good info as I think other people I know have been surprised at their AWS bills too.
Replacing a vCenter server for existing vSAN hosts
This is something I know people have wondered about, and I have been asked about. What happens to vSAN when a vCenter is rebuilt or replaced? This article is all about explaining that! Really interesting reading!
Installing VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7 in Ravello Cloud Service
The Ravello cloud is an interesting tool and I quite like it - but have not used it for a while - but it is nice to see this article to help people get 6.7 working in it.
New Release: VMware Datacenter CLI 2.9.1
I have not used this utility but it sounds interesting - a datacenter CLI? To learn more check out this article.
PowerCLI and VVols Part II: Finding vVol UUIDs
Cody has an article about how to find the UUIDs of vVols, which is in fact something I had not thought of but is quite interesting. How would you figure that out? Good thing that Cody has it all worked out.
Adding a fifth (virtual) ESXi host to vCenter Foundation
Duncan has an interesting article about a problem, and a workaround. Good to know if you are working with Foundation.
How-to Upgrade ESXi 6.x to 6.7 via vSphere Update Manager (VUM)
I am a big proponent of VUM. I like it a lot and use it to not just do updates and upgrades but also installing drivers for my hosts. You can find out how to use VUM to upgrade to 6.7 in this article.
Resource Consumption of Encrypted vMotion
I do like reading Franks articles, as I always learn something. In this one it is about the resource cost of encrypted vMotion. Way less than expected for sure.
Log Intelligence versus Log Insight
Steve has an article that covers off both these products and since I use Log Insight, and have seen Log Intelligence I was in fact curious about the two products and how they differed.
vRealize Log Insight 4.6.1 is now GA
This is a little old, but it is now GA, and the release notes are easy to find. My upgrade was easy and just like all the other LI upgrades! This was not a major update at all!
Released: vCloud Director 9.1.0.1 - API Tweaks and Resolved issue
Anthony has an article on the newish release of vCD. Some nice fixes and good info so thanks Anthony for sharing.
Adding Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to vCloud Director Keystore
Anthony has a useful article for anyone wanting to add Let’s Encrypt certs to vCD. And it sounds like it is a bit of work and complexity too.
VMware Cloud on AWS - Single-host SDDC Offering
Brian has the article that tells you about the single-host offering in VMware which is pretty handy for learning about VMC, but also when you have automated QA type processes!
Auditing detailed operations within VMware cloud on AWS using Activity Log API
In Williams article you can learn more about how you get very detailed audit logs.
VMware Horizon v7.5 Help Desk Tool Feature Walkthrough
The help desk in 7.5 is in a different place and so this walkthrough is useful and interesting. I like the HelpDesk tool and I am in a very small View environment, so I bet it is much more useful the bigger your View world gets.
Backup Oracle Database Server with Veeam
In this article you can learn about backing up Oracle servers using Veeam. It works good and is pretty interesting so I am glad I found this article to share.
Tips to backup & restore your SQL server
Kirsten has a nice article on how to do backups and restores of a SQL server so very good info. But, it is important to talk with your SQL DBA’s before you use any of the info in the article. It would be very easy, following the article to make decisions that would ruin your DBA’s day.
Veeam 9.5 Update 3a - What’s in it for Service Providers
Anthony talks of update 3a from the point of view of SP’s and that is always interesting for me to read.
Fixing Veeam Backup & Replication Proxy Install Errors
Bob has some great suggestions for helping with issues when trying to install proxy servers. Really good info actually as I have used some of it successfully before.
Best Practices for Hardening the Veeam Backup Repository (Windows)
Here is an interesting article that has very good suggestions about how to secure your Windows based Veeam repository. These suggestions are the kind that will protect you from theft, accidental deletions and ransomware too.
Veeam: Veeam Agents update, what’s new in Veeam Agent for Windows 2.2 and Veeam Agent for Linux 2.0.1
Jorge has an article that talks about what is new in the agents that recently released. The Windows agent is mostly about new versions of Windows but the Linux one has a lot of fixes, new OS support,and even more CLI functionality.
Veeam Agent Management Linux user account requirements
In this KB article you can learn more about Linux granular user account options when working with the Veeam Linux agent.
Store all of your Data with the Powerfull Cisco UCS S3260
I have heard people talk about what a cool server this is, with so much storage and the ability to be a great Veeam B&R server with a big repo. I even saw one for the first time last week. But was fighting fires so could not take time to look more closely at it. So when I saw Melissa’s article on this subject it was great to read it. If you want to learn more it is a great start.
PKS 1.1 is now Generally Available!
I do like to read Chad’s articles, and this one is no different. I would love to one day get some demo’s and get PKS into my lab to learn but things are busy. BTW, here is a much dryer post from VMware on this release.
Encrypting passwords in a PowerShell script
In this article you can learn how to work with passwords in your scripts that people cannot read!
Welcoming Virtual Storage Console 7.2 with support for new VMware features
You can learn more about this new version of the NetApp VSC in this article. This is a useful tool for VMware customers that use NetApp.
vSphere Upgrade Saga: Building Virtual - in - virtual labs
Edward has a good description for anyone who wants to build out some very nice virtual labs inside their virtual infrastructure.
HPE Discover 2018 Takeaways
Matt - who I think joined VMware earlier this week - congrats on that btw! - has an article from his time at HPE Discover. I would have loved to visit that show and ask why they massively slowed down the BIOS on the DL360 Gen 9 hosts.
HPE and vSAN
I was recently working on some HPE DL360 Gen9 servers. It was quite a rude shock. The slowest BIOS around, and very graphic. And they use their own words for things. So I could not find pass-through mode in the array - controller software but I could create RAID0 arrays - I say arrays as there was one for each disk. Worked OK. But this article from a few years back was a good reminder for the array stuff and vSAN. Thanks Wade!
#SFD16 - NetApp - Cloud Insight
Michael has an article about Cloud Insight that he spent some time with recently. Interesting stuff.
Apple’s free Schoolwork app now available for teachers
This new tool is good for teachers that can help you with creating assignments, and viewing progress. So pretty handy in classrooms that use Apple products.
Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to a stork
This is sort of a funny article actually. I thought those kind of long distance projects used satellite communications.
While no one was looking, California passed it’s own GDPR
I was one of the ones not watching so when I saw this this article - thanks to Danny for sharing, I was surprised but this is a good thing. We need a few more of these!
The EU GDPR is now in effect. What has happened so far?
I was hopeful to see one of these articles, as I am curious to hear how things have gone with GDPR since it became law.
HCI or Not? Understand the Datrium solution in a 3 minutes read
Andre has an interesting article with some good points in it. I was able to get a quick demo recently of Datrium and it is pretty darn cool stuff.
A Peek Inside the (Mobile) Sausage Factory
I use the AMX mobility app and like it. So it was interesting to see this article about how it came to be. Sounds very painful but also sort of fun.
Top 3 Free Tools to Create ESXi 6.7 Install USB Flash Drive
In this article Vladan will share with you the three tools to create a USB flash drive with vSphere on it. I want to add I have had to do that lately, with vSphere, GpartED, and memtest86 and the only tool that I found that would do all of that - on a Mac - is Etcher. So for both .img and .iso it worked great.
Application Discovery and Mapping with Uila
I am already a fan of Uila but I did also enjoy this article about what you can do with it.
A Salacious Soliloquy on Sysmon
This is a very interesting use of Splunk and sysmon. Cool stuff.
WordPress: GDPR compliance
Edward has some very good suggestions for making some small changes in your WordPress blog to protect yourself with respect to GDPR. This is something I need to figure out for myself too.
Runecast Analyzer v1.8 General Announcement
This most excellent tool has a new release that now covers off NSX, and can report on thousands of config combos that can be issues. Most excellent for the NSX shops out there.
1PasswordX 1.8: The Independence Update for Chrome and Firefox
In this article you can learn more about the 1Password version that is browser based. Some great new and improved features. I am a big fan of 1Password and recommend it strongly and unreservedly but I do prefer the standalone version of it.
macOS Mojave Preview: Dark is cool. The future is hot.
Not sure if any of you are looking at the Mojave public beta or not, I certainly would if I was home long enough. It looks quite interesting. If you are curious, here is a very good article about it.
Microsoft Office Support for macOS 10.14 Mojave
I suspect several of you have a spare computer on Mojave right now, and in fact I wish I did but I am not home enough lately. So I share this article that says Office should work on it.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far!
Michael
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WOW! That was a huge one Michael! Thanks for sharing!