Hi all,
An interesting week. Lots of the time in the lab. Things developed with customers that encouraged me to do some articles - one article on using multi-VLANs in a virtual lab for VAO, and one article on an odd issue in virtual labs.
Next week is my last week at home for a bit, two weeks of customer stuff and then VMworld, so I am pretty excited.
At VMworld I will be spending time in the bloggers area so if anyone wants a demo of the very cool Veeam Availability Orchestrator I would be happy to do that. Plus, remember I am a Veeam R&D product manager so if you want to chat about how to improve our products I would be very happy to listen, and chat with you. I will share via Twitter when I am and where I am. BTW, here is an article with all the parties and events for VMworld.
If you would like to attend the Veeam party at VMworld, which is often a very nice party, and I will be there too, you can click on this link.
I was recently asked a different sort of question. Does my template articles - particularly the Win10 one, work on physical machines. The answer is yes, most of the info. As an example of what would not work, is remove the floppy and other unnecessary ports. But most info would work fine.
I do have things to share, and I hope to entertain everyone with at least one interesting thing, and maybe a few of you with a few interesting things!
Have a great weekend,
Michael
Now Available: vSphere 6.7 Clustering Deep Dive Book
I saw Duncan’s article the other day and ordered my copy of the book. I ordered it same day - on the 30th but it will not arrive until the 9th of August. There is no electronic version yet but they are working on it I hear. I have the other versions of this book and they are great references. So I am looking forward to this book!
VMware vSphere Integrated Containers 1.4.2 now GA
You can find the release notes, and bits easy enough. I heard from Mark that you need to confirm compatibility if you are using this with vRA. This is something I need to get into my lab one day.
Performance Best Practices Guide for vSphere 6.7
This new guide is out and it is pretty darn interesting. For example I learned an amazing performance tip for content libraries. Very useful guide that anyone building vSphere clusters, or looking after them, should check out.
How to patch vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.7 Offline
Vladan has an article to help you patch your VCSA when there is no Internet connection. It is very easy indeed to patch - and I have done it already three times I think since 6.7 was deployed - when you have an online connection but I know that is not always the case so this is good info.
Why upgrade vSAN? Here is a lit of features, Release by Release
Cormac has an article with a breakdown of vSAN releases and features. Quick interesting actually.
What’s New in vSphere 6.7 Hands-On Lab
If you have not upgraded to 6.7 yet, this article talks about a hands-on lab at VMworld you should check out. I like 6.7 and am happy with it. If you have not upgraded yet, then this lab is good for you to check out since it will help you learn about 6.7 and you can than decide what is important to you.
Workaround for disallowed CPU (56XX Series) in my R710 vSphere Upgrade
In this article you can learn about how to get vSphere 6.7 installed when the processor is not supported. Good info actually. This issue is what prompted me to get rid of my R710 servers.
Array snapshots part 1: managed snapshots
This interesting article by Cody has some of the reasons why VVols is something that if you could use VVols you should. Yes, there is still a bad bug with CBT that impacts backup products when the VMs being backed up are on VVols. It should be fixed soon.
Backing up and replicating encrypted VMS
In this article it talks about the issues of backing up encrypted VMs when they are at a service provider and the customers use different KMS. So pretty tough. If you are not a service provider, but you use VM encryption and Veeam as your backup tool, I wrote an article that will be quite helpful.
Why Stretched Clusters is not the same as a Disaster Recovery Solution
In this article you can learn something important - and very true - stretched clusters are not a DR solution but rather an HA solution.
Eliminate the Windows Reboot after Updating VMware Tools
This is interesting, and pretty darn cool. One reboot less - potentially, and a important driver managed by Windows Update.
Failure Installing NSX VIB Module on ESXi Host: VIB Module for Agent Is Not Installed On Host
An interesting problem and workaround, plus even news of a solution. There is a lot of NSX users out there and this article might help.
VMware Announces InterSystems Cache and IRIS Support of vSAN
In this article you can learn about more support for different kind of apps on vSAN. I suspect many have not heard of these apps but they are big ones in the Health space.
HomeLabs? This is what we have chosen for 2018
Here is an article about what someone has done for a home-lab and it has lots of details.
vROPs CLI created by Blue Medora
I have always been impressed with the coders at Blue Medora but I did not know they had created a CLI to interact with vROps. This is pretty cool, and here is an article that will help you do it but also show you some of what you can do.
New VMware Fling - Horizon Helpdesk Agent
You can learn more about this interesting new fling via this article. This looks quite useful.
Network Support Troubleshooting
I do like the Virtually Speaking podcast, even been on it a couple of times. But this particular episode on Network Support Troubleshooting was good.
The Guide to VMworld 2.0
You can see what VMworld has to say about VMworld in this article.
Veeam Intelligent Data Management for Huawei OceanStor
I have not see this type of storage before, but I do hear it is quite popular in other parts of the world so it is good that now they can in fact integrate Veeam with it. Find out more in this article.
IDC confirms Veeam is the Market Leader
The Veeam co-CEO writes about Veeam and how we are in the leader quadrant but also why. Good background on Veeam if you use Veeam, or sell it. I have spent some time with Peter, and I like him a lot. He is definitely a guy to bet on.
Veeam Backup & Replication plug-in missing in vSphere HTML5 Web Client after upgrade to vSphere 6.7
This Veeam KB article is important. I uninstalled the plug-in before I upgraded to vSphere 6.7 and installed the plug-in after the upgrade. I only saw it in the flash client and not the HTML5 client. So I did do the uninstall, than the manual clean up mentioned in the KB article, then installed it again. Then log out of your vSphere Web Client, and vSphere Client and go have lunch or something like that. Then log back in and you should now see the plug-in in the vSphere Client (HTML5) and all will be good. That is the way it happened for me.
Sublime Text + Veeam
This article talks of an interesting idea. Someone did a package for Sublime that works with Veeam B&R so that errors and warning are highlighted. I have not tried it out yet but will and update everyone. BTW, I did this for PowerShell in Sublime Text.
Microsoft LAPS deployment and configuration guide
I did not know about LAPS but it sounds pretty cool. The ability to provide a password that may not last forever. You can learn about implementing this functionality in this article / whitepaper. This does not sound as good as what I have used before. I used ManageWise’s password product, which was pretty good, but there is also better choices now I hear.
How to remove the Veeam Backup & Replication Console
I did have problems removing the console once, and I could have used this article. Good info!
Adding on-prem SharePoint to Veeam Backup for Office 365 fails with internal error
You can learn all about this in this support KB article. And yes, the solution is there too!
Notification emails in Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 consist of unreadable symbols
You can find more details and a solution in this support KB article.
VeeamON 2018: Notes from the field - Exploring Some of Veeam’s Restore Scenarios
Matt has an interesting article based on his session at VeeamON. Interesting stuff.
Installing the First Two Domain Controllers
Just in case anyone needs to be reminded about creating virtual machines in vSphere this article will help. I do all my VM creation via templates so I don’t install from scratch often.
Supermicro: How to replace the CPU fan in our Superserver 5028D-TN4T with a Noctua NF-A6x25
Jorge is having an heat wave in his part of the world and it is tough on servers, and so he upgrades the fan and you can learn all about it in this article. I think not only a good idea, but also a good reminder about cleaning things sometimes!
Say Bye-Bye to Exchange Unified Messaging in Exchange Server 2019
I always thought, in general and not specific to Exchange, that unified messaging was pretty darn cool. Getting email, faxes, and voicemail in the same place was sort of handy. So not sure why Exchange is changing. I have not used unified messaging with Exchange mind you.
Updated: Expanding Drive C: in Windows 2016
I learned this recently and it was a surprise. I stopped putting programs and data on drive D: long ago when I learned how I could use VMware to expand the disk of a drive and use Windows to extend to use the new space. So everything has been stored on drive C:. However, this does not work with Win2K16 any longer since they put an emergency partition right beside drive C: so it cannot be easily expanded. So I am back with my most recent application install with a D: and all programs and data on it. UPDATED - in checking 4 additional Win2K16 servers, I found one with the partition before drive C: so C: is expandable and 3 where it was not. So what I said previously as a hard fact is not but it does vary. One idea is maybe use something like GPartEd to move the partition if it is in the way. I wonder if that will work? Maybe do that in the template so that anything deployed from it would be the same?
Reddit’s August 2018 security incident: What you need to know
I know a number of you out there use Reddit, and if so you need to check out this article. I think all of you need, at the minimum, to change your password. I would like to hope all of you that read this use 1Password, and have a different password for every service, and it is highly complex and long and it also helps to make it easy to change passwords.
Data sheds light on how Russian Twitter Trolls targeted Canadians
I was surprised to see this article, as much as I knew that Russia messed with the US via social media I did not think about if that happened to Canada. But it does but not to the same scale. I recently tried to educate my niece about how social media wasn’t something to believe generally but something to smile about, and chat with your friends. But it didn’t work and she believes it all. Too bad.
What Differentiates Servers in a Commodity x86 World?
Stephen has an interesting article that talks about Dell servers. I do like the direction they are going with respect to management. I like having the ability to use my iPad or iPhone to check things. It sounds like you need to use a VPN when outside of the office and that sort of sucks. I don’t think I will see iPhone type functionality for management of my Supermicro boxes but I will hope.
ToothFairy
Do you have AirPods? I do and quite like them. But sometimes using them with my Mac is not super smooth. There are a few more clicks that there should be. If that is a problem for you, here is a solution. I don’t use this utility but I know people that do and they quite like it.
Socializing Siri: Add Relationships, Teach Pronunciations, and More
If you are not doing this sort of thing already this article will help you. Saying call my Dad, or call my sister is much more natural for me.
Thoughts on the Touch Bar (cost and function keys)
In this article the author talks about the Touch Bar in terms of cost and how useful. I happen to be one of the people that quite like the touch Bar and think it very useful.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far,
Michael
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