Newsletter: January 12, 2019

Hello all,

I spent a long week in the lab.  Working with a future version of VAO and it was pretty good.  Lots of new functionality. Later in the week I also worked in LabEngine from iLand.  It is a hosted lab very much like what I used to work in at VMware.  Very cool stuff. If you are at the Veeam Velocity event in a few weeks it will be behind the Hands ON Lab (HOL) and booth demos.

I updated - minor additions - the article on HomePod.  It is an important part of my working at home, and I really like the HomePod.

If you want to learn more about Veeam 9.5 Update 4 you can on January 22. There is a lot in update 4 and certainly a great deal you do not know about.  So it should be a good session for any and all Veeam customers.  You can learn more in this article. This will happen at our Velocity event which is going to be pretty exciting as it will have both Veeam and our partners attending.

Today we have a bigger newsletter with quite a range of topics.  I hope something for everyone.

But, as always, I have things to share so lets get started. And thanks for checking out my newsletter - it is much appreciated.

Have a great week!

Michael

Cisco nenic Driver Issue During NSX Upgrades
In this article you can learn about an issue when you do NSX upgrades that could cause an outage.  So very good info to share.

Device X is not listed on the vSAN Compatibility Guide, can I still use it?
Duncan answers this question and much more around this issue.  The fact is in home labs it doesn’t matter if components are on the HCL, but only if they work.  But production workloads need support sometimes, and if you want easy support, than make sure everything is on the HCL.

How to configure VCSA 6.7 HA in HTML5 vSphere Client
Jorge has an nice article on configuring HA in the VCSA using the HTML5 client.  Very good info as I think HA mode in the VCSA is pretty useful.  I should mention that this article is in Spanish  that Google Chrome translated very nicely. Let me know if you have issues and I will minimize doing this sort of thing.

Configuring a VMware Tools Repository in vSphere 6.7 U1
This article will help you to have a VMware Tools storage location and configure the hosts to pull VMware Tools from it.  This is very important if you wish to seriously speed up host deployment - like in Auto Deploy.  When I had to do this external Tools repo it was due to using Auto Deploy and wanting to use a smaller ESXi image so that things would go faster.  I would also suggest strongly to use the same version of VMware Tools as is supplied on the hosts.  Once you start using VMware Tools that is not from the hosts or the same version as the hosts, you now have something else to confirm on the HCL when you do things - such as installing View.

ESXi Host TPM attestation alarm
In this interesting article, you can learn more about using a host TPM and what to do when it doesn’t work. Pretty interesting stuff, I wish I could play with it on my hosts.

VMware Skyline Collector 2.0 now GA
I am a little late on this, but here is the release notes, and the announcement blog. It does sound like a cool product and I hope to be able to play with it one day.

Managing Distributed Firewall Rules in VMC using PowerShell & NSX-T Policy API
William has an article that shows you all you need if you want to use PowerShell and manage your VMC firewall environment.  Very powerful stuff.

NSX-T Data Center Logging Options and Configuration
You can find a very nice document attached to this article on logging options and config of NSX-T.

Enhancements to Virtual Machine Memory Metrics in vRealize Operations
This important article will help you understand how vROps - in different versions, has handled memory metrics.  In particular, the most recent version handles it differently but I think more logical.

NetApp Management pack and full stack demo
In this demo you can see the real power of vROps when you have a management pack that connects between VMware and NetApp.  Very powerful stuff. I have worked with a few of the Blue Medora management packs and they are very cool.

VM Power Status - vROps and Log Insight
This article is in the VMware Code repo and is about how you can get additional functionality in your vROps / Log Insight. That means dashboards and metrics that will help you with VM power status.  Very cool stuff actually, and all the hard work has already been done and you just do easy stuff. This is what the code repo is about - helping you get functionality that is useful, and the hard stuff already done.

Obtaining Specific PowerCLI Versions from the PowerShell Gallery
If you ever need to have - not the latest - but a specific version of PowerCLI than this article is just what you need.

View Host Allocation by Cluster in PowerCLI
In this article you can get a nice script that will show you nicely the host resource usage in your cluster.  It works great in Windows but not in macOS.

New vRealize Log Insight Content Pack for vSAN Released
Pete has the breakdown on the updated vSAN CP - which is a pretty nice content pack actually.

Replacing a Synology Drive
I had a drive in my Synology 1813+ start reporting a IO error.  Lots of errors, and then it was other kinds of errors.  So I ordered another drive of the same type. But I wasn’t really sure what to do.  So I powered off the array, pull the bad disk out, and put the new one in.  After I restarted, I did a quick SMART test on the drive, next I rebuilt the volume.  It took a long time but that was the end of the work. So not too hard.  Then I found this article that would have made it less of guessing game. I do like these Synology arrays.  BTW, while the volume was rebuilding, I could access my SMB share.

Exclusive: How a Russian firm helped catch an alleged NSA data thief
I do love the irony in this article. Makes me smile. But the scale of the data theft scares me.

Veeam ONE compatibility patch for VBR 9.5 U4
In this Veeam KB article you can get a script for ONE that you will need if you are a service provider using Cloud Connect. It will be required once you upgrade to VBR 9.5 U4.  However, if you are a customer who is not hosting Cloud Connect, you do not need this script at all. ONE 9.5 U3 will be able to monitor Backup & Replication 9.5 U4 with no issue. I am trying to get the article to be more clear and obvious.

Why it’s so easy to get started with Veeam
Melissa talks about why it is so easy to get start with Veeam. It is quite true that it is very easy to get started with Veeam, and for most customers that is the end of it.  For the customers that have thousands of VMs to protect a small amount of design needs to be done but still not that hard. VAO is easy to install, but much harder to use.  You need to do a lot more prep work to make VAO work the way you need it.

Why NVMe is headed for the mainstream this year
In this article there is some good info and background on NVMe. I would like to think the author is right too.

Jumbo Frames and VXLAN performance
This article is very educational, and he has done some interesting testing and has a very good recommendation too.

License Expired
If you are a HyTrust CloudControl user, this article talks about what to do if your license expires. Thanks Vic, good info.

HandBrake 1.2.0
You can learn about this new version of HandBrake in this article.  I use to use this software in the past and it was quite handy.  It has come a long way.

Grocery Pickup - Famous Cars
Anthony shared this video out and I quite agree that it is a great commercial. Thanks for sharing Anthony!

Wi-Fi 6: What’s Different, and Why it matters
An interesting article about the next generation of Wi-Fi performance and some of the other changes too. Like version numbers. Once our devices support it, and then our WAP in our homes support it, we will have a lot of additional performance.

How to use Siri to find and listen to music on HomePod
This article has some pretty good info on using Siri to find and play music via the HomePod.  I love my HomePod and use it a lot.

Beware Spoofed Calls from Apple
This article is definitely worth understanding if you have friends or family with Apple devices. I think whether it is Apple, or a bank, that if they ask you to do things, that you should definitely not click on the request in the email, but go to the web site in question and do what you need.  Much safer that way. Or, you can always call the vendor and ask them!

How to find the HDMI-ARC port on your TV
This port means both video and audio go over the same cable.  So it is good to use the proper port to minimize cabling. Here is some info.

How to stop accidentally calling 911 and emergency contacts on iPhone
If you are an iPhone X user than this article is for you.  That is, if you have ever accidentally called 911 or your emergency contacts.

Is your iPhone Calling Other Countries?
This article is pretty funny, and yet it is good to know in case it happens to you! I would not be surprised if this was not an iPhone thing and could happen with other cell phones.

Thanks for reading, or skimming this far,

Michael

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