Hello all,
I hope that this finds everyone doing well? Was a busy week for me. I was excited to see vSphere Update 1, and yet I thought there may be issues with it and Veeam. My reason for that thinking was there was so much changes in it, especially in vSAN. I did find a small issue, and it was fun to surprise QA with it. That turned into this KB article. BTW, this was an issue for both replication and backup, but the workaround in the KB fixes both.
I did finally get a Series 4 Apple Watch and so updated my article on moving to a new Apple Watch. I sure like the new size and display. I did do a few articles this week - one to help me remember how to do ISO with Supermicro iKVM, but also I did one on what software is on my Mac, and what is in my travel laptop bag. I do like reading other people’s articles like this so it is good to do my own. I also updated my VSM article with info on a new release of VSM. And yes, the day of U1 GA, I used it to pull down everything, do an SHA 256 check, and it was pretty easy and cool.
Thanks to Anton, in his last weekend’s Form Digest, he reminded me of some things, and educated me too. I would like to suggest that you do not ever do Storage vMotion when the VM(s) has snapshots. There are issues in 6.x and 6.7 that could impact you if you SvMotion VM(s) with snapshots so avoid it.
I will link below to vSphere 6.7 Update 1 below as per normal, but I wanted to make sure I mentioned that I have done upgrades now of two labs and it was mostly very smooth. My Supermicro lab had a small hiccup but it was easy to fix and get things done. I had to clean my Chrome browser cache to access the HTML5 client but I do like having all the necessary functionality in there. So I am very happy with U1, and I think it has a lot to offer, and not the least is the feature complete HTML5 client. As you might expect, I can confirm that both Runecast and Veeam plug-ins survived the update, and worked great in the HTML5 client. I have noticed two things that puzzle me - the first is that the notes field on each VM seems to be full now. Not true before the upgrade and yet true after it. Also, on the Host summary screen, in the Update Manager widget, I have a Host Firmware field that says up to date. Which is true, but I am impressed it knows that about my Supermicro gear. I suspect it doesn’t know for sure, and for any hardware it doesn’t recognize, it says Up to date. I wish it said unknown firmware or hardware or something. BTW, my Veeam virtual labs would not start after the U1 update. But all that was required was to edit them. No need to make any changes, but edit them and than save when done and they were good.
BTW, I have reached a frustration limit on Twitter. There is just too much crap and it has become quite a time sink. So what I have done is now I ignore the actual timeline. I have a number of lists where I specify who I watch. So I do see interesting twitter stuff but less crap and less volume. But, if you think I missed your tweet, and you think I need to see it, then DM me and I will add you to a list or tell you I did see it.
But, as always, I have some interesting things to share. I hope someone for everyone,
Michael
VMs running on SESparse snapshot may report guest data inconsistencies
This scary KB article on a serious issues also shows vSphere 6.7 U1 as having the fix. Important to remember that SEsparse snapshots are not what are used all the time - other than on VMFS-6 datastores. They are used on VMFS-5, and NFS for virtual disks that are over 2 TB. But, for some of us, this is a very good reason to upgrade to U1.
Veeam and SovLabs
I had a VMware support case brought to my attention this week where a customer had upgraded vRealize Automation and their plug-in to integrate Veeam with vRA did not work any longer. This happened because they were using an open source plug-in. Once upon a time, that was the only choice, but for the last while there is a far better choice - SovLabs, and they have many different plug-in choices that share a framework. I use several of their plug-ins and I strongly recommend them!
HA Futures: Orchestrated Restart and Restart Priority - Part 1 of 4 - (Please comment)
Duncan has an article that he needs comments on. It is important to help him to help us get the best products possible. I agree about the confusing nature of the UI in this area and I hope lots of you can comment for him.
vSphere 6.7 Update 1 is now GA
This very much anticipated release is now GA, and you can find the vC release notes and bits, and the ESXi release notes and bits. I did put my comments above about my upgrade but I am very happy with this release. You can find Williams list of things in this article.
Why and How to Upgrade to vSphere 6.7 U1
You can learn more about Update 1, and the upgrade in this article. It is a low stress upgrade so that is good!
What’s New in vCenter Server 6.7 Update 1
Emad has a great article on the new stuff in Update 1. One thing you don’t hear much about is the updated Content Library. I love how it can natively support templates now. Here is another article just on the fully feature HTML5 client.
What’s New with Auto Deploy in vSphere 6.7 Update 1
Some time ago, a bunch of years in fact, I designed a Auto Deploy environment. It was for several hundred hosts that were in fact identical. So it was not hard and a lot of fun. But, oh my, has Auto Deploy come far. In this article it talks about what is new in Update 1.
Latency Round Robin PSP in ESX 6.7 Update 1
Cody has an article on this new PSP and he does a great job of explaining it too. You can learn more about his testing of it in this article. If you have an all flash array then you should read both articles as it will be good info, but if you have Pure AFA than you most certainly should read and understand.
Nested ESXi 6.7 Virtual Appliance Updates
Thanks to Frank for reminding me about this. William does put a lot of effort and work into this valuable resource and it is much appreciated.
Understanding vSAN Witness Appliance - Cluster Membership, Versioning, and Hosting
This article was updated by Jase very recently. So very good info on the witness appliance.
Compute Policy in VMware Cloud on AWS
Frank has a very interesting article about some new functionality in VMware Cloud on AWS. I love doing things in a declarative system - I learned about that first in Puppet long ago.
Exciting New Features with VMware Log Intelligence
You can learn more about this interesting tool, which is how you access logs in VMC and it is sort of a SaaS service which gives it fascinating potential of power.
Active Directory 2016 and vSphere
It is important to note that Active Directory 2016 is not support by vSphere at this time. If you watch this article, however, you will see it is supported by vSphere 6.7 soon - possible this coming week.
Improving Windows 10 Performance by 3000% with these simple tricks
This is, I believe, an important article not just for Win10 users, but for VDI people! I am trying them out on my desktop, and I will have to add where it makes sense to my template too.
Virtualizing a Mac Pro and creating MacOS virtual machines
In this article you can get a bunch of help if you want to virtualize Mac’s. It works pretty darn good but it is very worthwhile to have some help doing it.
USB Image Tool for Windows easily backups up and restores your complete ESXi on USB
This is good to know so you can have backup of your ESXi boot USB and in fact good for doing an emergency USB replacement too.
Key Factors for SAP HANA Customers considering HCI for Production Workloads
You can learn why VMware thinks that SAP on vSAN is such a good idea - and it is certified too so that is good.
What is VMware App Defense? - From the Eyes of a vSphere Admin
In this article you can learn more about App Defense. It is a very exciting app and I sure wish I could play with it. I used to be a cyber security guy and it would have definitely helped with my work!
VMware Cloud Provider Pod 1.0 is now Available
This is something that sounds pretty cool - one click deployment for example? But check it out here. This sounds like a big deal for SP’s.
Deploying and Upgrading vRA with vRealize LifeCycle Manager 2.0
You can see the first article in this series. I have not seen many articles about using LifeCycle Manager.
Veeam + QUADStor: A perfect option for Linux-based Virtual Tape Library (VTL), free and very easy to deploy
You can learn about this in Jorge’s excellent article.
How to deploy Veeam Availability for Nutanix AHV
Michael has the article you need if you wish to install Veeam on AHV to support Veeam backups of AHV hosted VMs.
The Truth about Virtual Machines in The Cloud
Melissa has some very good points in her article. Something to remember for many who are thinking about how the cloud solves all your problems, and how different it is.
Visual Studio Code
I saw a tweet from Jase that said he strongly recommended Visual Studio Code. He mentioned it was Mac, Linux and Windows. So I took a look. I like it and think it pretty cool. Then I saw Williams article about extensions and that is really something.
Microsoft offers to kill more (of its own) bloatware with new Windows 10 Build
I saw this article that to Bob sharing it out. This is very good to see. While I am a Mac user, my admin workstation is Windows 10. And less crap would be good!
VMware Cloud on AWS Management Exam 2019
This new cert is a good one to go after as I think it will become more important in the future.
Top 10 Frequently asked customer questions about VMC validated partner solutions
In this article you can learn more about what solutions are validated for VMC. It is good to know of course if you are going to use VMC. While it looks like pure VMware and so anything VMware should work up there that is not true.
Apple Stops maintaining its printer compatibility list
Interesting article - particularly since I had no idea they had such a list. When I buy printers I look at the printer vendor site to see how they handle Apple. I love my HP Officejet Pro 8620 as when I did that it said it worked. But also went on to say that iPads and iPhones can easily print to it. And that has turned out pretty useful. All without a compatibility list.
Tile Mate 1 vs. Tile Mate 2: What’s the difference?
I know a number of you that like the Tile, and so do I. I did not know there was choices, and I heard people discussing them so I had to look things up. This article explains the choice. I do like Tile and may get back into it.
Siri Shortcuts
This is something very big in iOS 12, and it is not as hard as it sounds. Sort of easy to have your command added to Siri’s lexicon. Even TripIt likes this idea. But here an article to help, and another article as well. Between these two it should get you going. BTW, if you want to be able to say to Siri - when is my next flight, or something like that check this out.
The Illustrated TLS connection
Want to learn more about TLS and how it connects? You can via this article.
Hurricane Michael - interesting article
You have likely seen many articles about Hurricane Michael but I like this one due to the picture. Flattened neighborhood, but one house still standing. Sort of interesting.
What is in the bag?
After I did what is in the bag, one of my readers did too. Check it out. And he is Windows so that means there is bunch of other things that you would not see on my Mac stuff. Some really good stuff in his bag. In fact I had to spend money after I looked at his article.
Will you work for for a murderer?
This is an odd article, but it is one that is also a little interesting. I have met people I would not work for, but not because they were murderers but because they were crappy people or bosses. But I think it might be good to not work for murderer’s as that could wrong in a few ways!
Here’s how to find out if your Facebook was hacked in the breech
For many of you, I suspect you are serious Facebook users - I am not and even my wife is pretty minor. But you should check this article out to see if you have been hacked.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far,
Michael
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