Hello all,
Another busy week in the lab. I hope that everyone is good - especially those of you in the path of Hurricane Michael. That sounds quite bad. Everyone stay safe. BTW, I saw in this article about the Hurricane that an Air Force base had moved out their non - essential people and all their airplanes. If you ever see or hear that, do not argue abut getting evacuated or not. Just go. The military does not evacuate for just anything so when they do take notice.
I did a few articles this week - one article on a VAO error that bothered me, and one article on the cool HTML5 Veeam plug-in for the vSphere Client. As well, I am working on upgrading the domain, and domain controllers in my lab so here is an article on that. One article that I did a while back was updated when I had an odd issue this week in the lab. I lost access to my VBR server. When I did a ping test I noticed I was pinging not the public IP I should be, but rather the storage network IP. My VBR server is on the storage network so it can do DirectNFS backups which is very fast.
If you have one of those Supermicro mini-tower system like I do, and if you have had 10 GB network issues with them check out my article on this.
VeeamON Virtual 2018 is a major event for Veeam and its customers. I will have a session in it about automated DR testing. Very cool stuff. Learn more in this article.
But lots to share, with some different stuff this week, so lets get started.
Have a great week,
Michael
VMware Update Manager Firmware Updates in vSAN 6.7 U1
John has an interesting article about how as of 6.7 U1 firmware updates will be done via VUM. And that is very cool. It is all abut vSAN right now, but I suspect over time - or rather I strongly hope - that it will work for non - vSAN related firmware too.
Deploying the vSAN Witness Appliance within VMware Cloud on AWS
I have seen a few comments on how to do this so it is very nice to see this article that tells you exactly how to get it working. If you need to know how to get a Witness working this article will help.
vCenter Server 6.0 Update 3g/3h Upgrade or Migration Path
This article covers off a complicated situation so if you are on 6.0 and going to update you need to check it out. This is the sort of thing you need to expect when you don’t more or less keep up with the GA versions.
vCenter Server Licensing Options
Nigel has a nice article that talks about the different license options for vCenter and what they mean.
End of Availability of vSphere Operations Management Enterprise Plus
I remember the beginning of this edition or product package. It was many years ago. I bet this change will impact a lot of customers. I wonder why it had to be done?
Automating the Upgrade of the Virtual Distributed Switch
In this article you can see about automating the update of your vDS environment. This is good to know since it can help automate things but also because it is something people often forget to do during their upgrades.
Horizon View API’s: Back to Basics Part 1: Connecting
Here is the first article in a series that should be pretty interesting. It will help you get started with PowerCLI and View.
Horizon View and 2FA
There was a discussion recently on this subject and an article was shared too that is helpful. Also, I was surprised and impressed to hear that people were using DUO in home labs and in enterprises and both groups were happy.
Horizon View Bug - Host disconnected during Space Reclamation
Tim has an article guest written by another Tim, about an interesting issue in View. You can learn about the problem and more in the article. And I like how he used Log Insight to help. Unfortunately, this article is about a bug, and no solution yet. But there is a suggestion on avoiding this issue.
Put Your Operations in Overdrive - Technical Overview of the vRealize Operations Management Pack for vRealize Orchestrator v2.0
This has been a long time coming. vROps being able to execute operations using vRO. So pretty cool stuff and you can learn more in this article. This is a little more than just executing vRO code as was originally considered. So more functionality.
New Release: PowerCLI 11.0.0
This is a big release, lots of additional functionality and you can learn all about it in this article. You can learn more about the new and updated vSAN functionality in this article. I am so impressed I could do update-module on my Mac, and in my Windows desktop and get all the updates. So easy!
Getting Started with the Cloud Automation Services API
Grant has an article that will help you get started working with the VMC API. Interesting stuff, and it is part 4 of the series.
Learning Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX)
This very good info that Emad has shared is good learning! Find part 1 and part 2. If you are a VMC customer you very likely need this info!
Can I assign my Active Directory users a non-CloudAdmin vCenter Server role in VMC?
William answers that question in this article. Good info as when I was first working in VMC I wondered about this.
Released: vCloud Director 9.5 - Full HTML5 Tenant UI, NSX-T Thoughts and more!
Anthony talks of a new vCD release and it is pretty interesting. vCD has come a long way since I worked with it and that is very good indeed.
Considerations in a multi-cloud world
David has an article full of good things to think about in a multi-cloud world which I think over time will be everyone. David is one of the new Veeam guys on this team but is very smart and I expect to see some really good articles over time from him.
Windows Server 2019 GA Download
You can learn more about this new version of the Windows Server OS from Vlad in his article. I should mention I could not find Win2K19 in MSDN yet. Only a language kit for it, and features on request version. Odd.
PowerShell 101 Workshop
This is some PowerShell training I have heard is good. But it needs to have Vagrant or Hyper-V which is sort of odd to me. It is a pretty interesting learning model however.
Windows operations, introducing Chocolatey for Windows Package Management
Michael has a very interesting article about being able to do package management in Windows. I love that who package management works in my Centos VMs so if I can do it in Windows that is pretty cool.
Book - Managing Kubernetes
I have heard a lot of good things about this book. Kubernetes is fast growing and something to learn about. I hope to soon. There is a very good intro on Pluralsight. BTW, the author of the video on Pluralsight has done this article to help people get started with Kubernetes.
Yossi Appleboum on How Bloomberg is Positioning His Research Against Supermicro
This article is well done and brings up some good points on this Big Hack thing. I definitely agree with much of the article as much more realistic than what Bloomberg was saying.
Managing USB devices with Bitdefender
In this article you will learn how to block or allow USB devices in a client machine. Another one of the very powerful and cool functions that Bitdefender offers in their software. Nice job!
Apple Fixes Bugs with iOS 12.0.1, Watch 5.0.1, and tvOS 12.0.1
You can learn about these minor updates in this article. You should know for some of the new iPhone this is not a minor update. I have done all of these on my devices with no issue.
How to use Apple News in Mojave Regardless of Where you live
In this article you can learn how to use Apple News in Mojave if you are not in the US, UK or Australia. For example, I used it successfully in Canada. Be aware you do not get Canada centric news, and there are some of the US stuff you cannot access but there is a lot you can access. I cannot wait for this to be legit in Canada since it is a nice reading experience and on all my devices.
How to Create Mojave’s True Dynamic Desktops with Graphic Converter
This is very cool stuff - have you played with Dynamic Desktops in Mojave? That is the desktop that slowly changes with the time of the day - so getting light, and than getting darker. Very cool actually. In this article you can see how to do it with YOUR pictures.
HyperJuice: World’s Most Powerful USB-C Battery Pack
This looks pretty nice - it can change iPhones, iPads or MBP. It looks pretty darn good. And yes, I did make a pledge. I want one.
What’s the best calendar app for macOS?
You can get a good idea of what is out there in this article. I personally use BusyCalc and think it pretty darn good. I have also used in the past Fantastical and thought it pretty amazing too.
The iPhone XS and XS Max Review: Unveiling the Silicon Secrets
This very in-depth article is full of surprises. I am most impressed with what Apple has done with these new phones. They are clearly not built for iOS 12 but rather something like iOS 14. If you are into phone hardware you will like the article!
Thanks for reading or skimming this far,
Michael
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