Hello all,
I spent a lot of time in the lab this week. Still trying to recover from my dead array. It is working now, but a smart guy at Nexenta has help me to improve capacity, performance, and resiliency in it so that is very cool. And I have an article as a work in progress on that. It is pretty cool stuff. I need to wait for the drives to show up, but as soon as I can I will do that and publish the article. In fact once this rebuild is done I can finally get back to do technical articles which I love doing.
BTW, Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 update 4 and Veeam Availability Orchestrator 1.0 are compatible and work good together. Also BTW, if you want a free Veeam NFR key check out this article. And yes, it was out first with 10 but that was a mistake and it covers 20 instances now. If you need a laugh, here is a short video that makes me laugh. The Veeam part of it is pretty honest too. Not that we give up bubble wrap mind you.
I did update one article recently - the one about Nexenta and errors. Yes, that is related to me fixing my storage array issues!
But I have some pretty good stuff to share so lets get started. I am a little surprised at how much I found this week. I was consumed with work in the lab, and various customer things.
Have a great week,
Michael
Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 U4 Day 0 Update
If you installed the RTM version of 9.5 U4, it was build 2399 and there were a few minor things found between it and the GA. So if you installed that build here is a patch for you that will bring you to the GA which is build 2615.
Veeam ONE 9.5 Update 4 is now GA
This is a very big release - With Veeam Intelligent Diagnostics and remediation that can execute on alarm occurrence, and much more. Here is the What’s New, release notes, and the bits. Be sure to check out the what’s new as there is really a lot of new that you will want to check out.
VMware vCenter Server 6.7 Update 1b now GA
Here is the release notes, and I did the update already as it was easy and quick. There is a bit of a list of things fixed in this update. BTW, my vCenter version in the HTML5 client doesn’t match anything, but when I look in the Appliance Management screen I see the proper build and version numbers so I know the update was successful.
VMware Remote Console 10.0.4 now GA
You can see the bits and the release notes. But generally no one looks at those, and just let it update when it asks too. So I thought I would share this out this time anyway! I really appreciate this tool, and am so happy there is Windows, Linux, and Mac, versions.
Troubleshooting vSAN Performance
This article - PDF actually - is pretty darn useful. Yes, it will help you troubleshoot vSAN performance, but it will make you a better troubleshooter too. It will in fact help you design things better too I think. This is very well done and most excellent. Great stuff so thanks Pete!
vSAN Capacity Management and Monitoring Part 1
Jeff has a really informative article about understanding your vSAN capacity when you look at the UI. Good info and good explanation too.
PowerCLI Cookbook for vSAN
You can learn more about this cookbook in this article. But I can tell you I really like it. There is a lot more in it than just PowerCLI related to vSAN. It is currently 1.0 but I happen to know that Jase is working on adding stuff to it so it will have even more useful stuff. Really good examples, and useful ones too, and background info too.
Disabling the HotAdd/HotPlug capability in ESXi 6x, 5.x and ESXi/ESX 4.x VMs
Someone this week had a tough issue that took hours of their time to figure out. Then they found this KB article and the problem was fixed in 3 minutes. So if you have a D$ in your View VMs and cannot access it that KB article will help.
Understanding vSphere Health
Nigel has an interesting article about vSphere Health but has lots of background info too. Very good info, but a great service for us admins too!
Understanding NSX DFW Generation Numbers
This is a very good article to know and understand if you are working with NSX firewalls.
VMware NSX Use Cases and Cost Analysis
This article is very well done and introduces you to NSX use cases very nicely. Great info. And from a very good VMware partner too!
IPv6 Support Overview in vCloud Director 9.5
A nice article to learn more about IPV6 support and what is / is not / experimental. The author of that article is the main guy in the know so always worth reading his articles if they apply to you.
The Year of VDI: The survey results are out
You can see this article about the survey but near the button of it click on the red cloud to see the actual survey results which are interesting.
Using the Shuttle SH370R6 plus as a home lab server
In this article you can about someones search for a new home lab server. Some good research got him a cost effective solution. I had a Shuttle in my lab once. Then it died, and I didn’t. It is the only server to die on my in my lab.
The cost and efficiency of data
Anthony has a good breakdown of a new feature that allows you to have your SOBR repo never run out of space. Pretty cool stuff and Anthony explains it well.
Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 4 - What’s in it for service providers
Anthony breaks down VBR 95 U4 for service providers which is always nice to see.
Veeam Licensing Information
Here is some help with Veeam Licensing - this article will show you how to merge licenses, here is a copy of the Veeam Licensing Policy, and here is a FAQ. This is a very useful FAQ with how Veeam has changed its licensing, which is more simple once you are used to the change.
Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 4: New Stuff!
Michael has an article, the start of a series of them on the new Veeam release where he talks about the things he thinks significant. He even has videos to show things off.
Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager RESTFul APIs Upgrade Instructions
If you have scripts, or other code, or a product that talks to the Enterprise Manager API this article is for you.
Veeam: Veeam Community Edition - free and free to protect up to 10 instances
Jorge has a nice article about the new Veeam Community Edition. It is a Spanish article but it translates nice in Chrome.
Veeam for Service Providers … Ten Plus Year of Innovation
Anthony talks about the history of Veeam and Service providers in this article and it is pretty cool.
Beginners Guide to Data Corruption and How to Avoid it
This white paper is written by one of the Veeam support guys and is pretty interesting reading. You can learn about what kinds of corruption and how it occurs and how you can avoid it. Interesting stuff.
Architecture Guidelines for deduplicating storage systems
You can get additional info on dedupe systems as well as links to best practices for different vendors in this article.
Setting up Veeam configuration database in SQL AlwaysOn Availability Group
If you want to know how to do this you can learn in this article. Be aware that soon that article will be updated to use the GUI to do this. The current manual method works but when you do it in the GUI there is things like bounds checks that are nice to have.
Who can add workstation to the domain
I found this article quite useful recently so I thought I would share it with everyone. The account I used to join - in an automated way - new servers to the domain stopped working. I had hit the 10 limit so this article helped me set things up right.
Understanding Thunderbolt 3 Bandwidth
This article is a little bit of a surprise and it is also quite informative. Fortunately, I do not have 4k or 5k monitors. I have have a lot of Thunderbolt in the house though.
DSCR and Peter Testing
I have heard a number of smart PowerShell people talk about getting their work into Pester and they are excited. I know only a little about it and I must admit it sounds pretty cool, and pretty useful. You can learn more about using it in this article. Pretty good read.
Charging your Tesla Model3 at home?
If you are, or are about too, you can find out a lot about this subject in Paul’s article. I do like Teslas!
Automate Let’s Encrypt certificate renewals with AWS Route53 DNS records
Luca has some help for you in this article to do more automation around certs.
Apple revokes Facebook’s developer certificate over data-snooping app - Google Could be next
In this article you can learn some amazing stuff, like Facebook was paying people 20$ per month to seriously go through everything on their iOS or Android devices. And they did this by circumventing Apples guidelines / rules. BTW, this is one of the reasons I like Apple and use their gear and software. Apple kills their certificate and their stuff doesn’t get out the store and stops working. The fact Apple cares about our privacy is important to me.
Major iPhone FaceTime bug lets you hear the audio of the person you are calling … before they pick up
You can learn about this problem in this article, but also, you may have noticed that Group FactTime is offline? I expect this all to be fixed soon.
You Can Call Me Al
I saw this article recently and was surprised and impressed. Al, you impressed me. When you see yourself so well, great things are possible. I think maybe I could see you as a vendor SE, empowering customers. We should have a drink or drink and snacks sometime.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far,
Michael
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