Hi all,
Another week at home, mostly in the lab was very nice, and quite civilized too. Back on the road this weekend - for a new country this time - the Czech Republic so it is very exciting to visit someplace new. And to make it even better going to work with my R&D teammates on the future.
I was able to write a few things this week - one article on moving to a new MBA, and one a lot different from what I normally write. We hear the phase “Lest we forget’ a lot around Remembrance Day in Canada and so I wrote an article about it. I have several articles underway but lab issues have interrupted them. I have also had someone ask about doing a Win2K19 template article so I will add that to the list too. BTW, I know some of you were surprised I went from a newish MacBook Pro to the new MacBook Air but it has turned out very well. I still have a dock, and a big screen to work in, and yet a much smaller but full featured laptop to carry so things are very good with this new MBA. I do recommend it.
I have a number of things to share this week, including a couple of almost important public service tidbits (PSA).
Have a great week,
Michael
Important patches - exploit in vmxnet 3
You can find patch info on this for 6.7, 6.5, and 6.0. Time to patch!
New vSAN 6.7 U1 Advanced Options
Cormac does - as always - a very good job at explaining things - this time advanced options. This is very good news, as host parameters were awkward to get right, and are now cluster rather than host, and mouse selectable. Very cool.
Warning - User permissions added are removed automatically from vCenter after upgrading to 6.7
Here is an important KB article about this. I have heard of this in the wild so be aware! However, this did not happen to me.
vSphere Upgrade Saga: Finally vSphere 6.7
Edward has a very big lab with almost all of the VMware products in it so when it is upgrade time it is pretty interesting. See his most recent adventure in this article.
How to Secure Erase ESXi Disks (HPE or Generic Hardware)
I used to do this, in early days of vSAN, by booting my hosts to GPartEd and erasing partitions. That worked pretty good but the info in this article is much easier but also it is a bit more thorough too.
PSA - Don’t change your DNS if using Log Insight 4.7 and vSphere 6.7 U1
I changed DNS in my lab - yes, bad idea but it could not be avoided - and now I have big Log Insight issues. I was told if I use the FLEX client and edit vApp options I would be able to change the DNS info. I knew that and have done that in the past but in 6.7 U1 it doesn’t have that capacity, as there are missing fields. VMware is aware of this, and as soon as I ship them a video they will believe me and hopefully do something about it. And yes, this will delay the release of the updated and improved Log Insight Content Pack for Veeam Backup & Replication.
Backup, Restore and Replicate App Volumes, AppStacks, and Writable Volumes
If you are using Datrium gear you can do backup and restores of your App Volumes environment which is pretty nice! Find out more in this article.
vCloud Director 9 HTML5 Portal Customization
This article talks about some big news, I know people have been wanting to do this sort of thing for a very long time. I love how VMware has even released a toolkit to help with this.
ReFS known issues
Veeam Support has this article to keep track of known issues with ReFS. ReFS is still worth using, and I like it a lot but it is good to be aware of potential issues.
PSA - EEro and bridged mode equals no Eero Plus
I use Eero and really like it. It is fast and easy to deal with. They have a Plus option that provides a lot of security oversight and protection. It turns out that since I am using Eero in what they call bridged mode - meaning I am doing my own DHCP for example, I cannot do the Eero Plus. I do not think they knew that when I purchased the Plus mode.
There are NO shortcuts to success
Melissa has a good article on this and it is worth understanding! I completely agree with it and I am glad she has written this article.
Spectre, Meltdown researchers unveil 7 more speculative execution attacks
There seems to be no end to this stuff - but learn more about it in this article. It is getting crazy but if you do defense in depth, and have your hosts in a protected management network, then you can worry much less - and avoid doing the mitigations that cost performance.
Storage Short Take #1
An interesting collection of news that - for the most part - I have not seen elsewhere.
The State of the Octoverse - Programming languages
In this article - thanks to Kyle for sharing it - you can learn some surprising stuff. I had no idea that Java was so popular. And it was fascinating to me the geographic connection in some of this too.
Update on Windows 2019 availability
In this article they talk about the first time, and now, of the Win2K19 release. And yes, next time I am home an in the lab I will start working on a template article for it.
How the heck did we get here? (My Technology Career Change Part 2)
An interesting read about how this fellow ended up happy doing something quite unexpected. A good lesson indeed!
Rubrik 5.0 “Andes” - A Refreshing Expansion
Sean talks about the new release from Rubrik. I am impressed at the number of releases and the cadence too. This is really a big release.
The Secret History of Plasma Weapons
I had this come in a few days ago and it caught my eye. I had no idea the amount of work ongoing in one country in this space. Very interesting capabilities over time for sure but there is still not a model I can carry on my hip.
Meet the Heroes Who Saved Malibu’s Horses from a Fiery Inferno
I have been through Malibu, but I had no idea how many horses, and other kinds of pets were there. In this article, you can learn how professionals and volunteers saved so many of them. A serious crisis really does bring out the best in most people.
FAA evaluates a potential design flaw on Boeing’s 737 MAX after Lion Air crash
In this article you can learn about what likely killed the Lion 737 crash, but also about some interesting technology. I have flown in a lot of 737’s over the years but no 737 MAX yet.
OWC announces new Thunderbolt 3 doc with 85 W charging, dedicated USB-C port and microSD slot
I have the previous generation of this dock and I really like it. Works good for me. So hopefully this new version is even better - it does have a microSD slot so that is good.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far,
Michael
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