Hello all,
I hope everyone is well - and not sick? Isolation here is working pretty good. A little odd for a guy that is used to traveling really a lot. But I know it is for a good reason so we make it work. New Zealand is making strict isolation work pretty good too - which you can see in this article. Strict isolation is not a conspiracy or a plot it is about making sure less people get sick which means we have enough hospital beds for the people that do get really sick. I think most of us know that but I wish more people knew.
I had an interesting time upgrading my lab to vSphere 7 and you can see the story and my workarounds in this article. I am very fond of vSphere 7 and look forward to working with it.
I bet you are not surprised I have more to share today? People staying home have more time to write I guess.
I have a lot to share, so I should get started!
For those of you that share it - Happy Easter, and to those that don’t, have a great weekend!
Have a great week, and stay safe!
Michael
VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.3 is Now Available
I like very much how it supports vVols but I also like the automatic protection too. That can be tricky mind you but it is pretty cool as well. Here is a short article on what is new.
VMware NSX-T Data Center 3.0 is Now Available
You can find the release notes and bits as necessary.
VMware NSX-T 3.0 - What’s New
This article talks about what is new in the latest NSX-T. I like the sound of the IDS that is part of it.
NSX-T 3.0 Meets vSphere 7 - vDS 7.0
Very interesting article about NSX-T 3.0 and vSphere vDS. Some nice improvements.
Scaling out your vSAN File Services Cluster
Duncan explains in this article the right way to do this and that is handy! This is pretty cool functionality.
vSAN 7 Technical Overview
Here is the video that gives a vSAN 7 technical overview.
Getting Started with vSphere 7.0 Lifecycle Manager
This article has a good start on Lifecycle Manager. But I think that Lifecycle Manager is not related to VUM at all.
vSphere 7 - Introduction to the vSphere Pod Service
Mike has an article that explains this nicely. This is the start of some articles on vSphere 7 and K8’s but from the sys admins point of view it seems and that is good. Good info Mike - thanks!
Customizing Findings & Recommendations in VMware Skyline
If you are lucky enough to have Skyline in your environment - which is very useful - you might find this article useful.
Announcing VMware vRealize Network Insight 5.2
This article talks about the new stuff in vRNI but I did not know there was both a cloud version and a standalone version. I love what the cloud version can do with apps as that would be very helpful for BCDR work.
vCloud Availability for vCloud Director - Part 1 - Introduction
You can learn more about what vCloud Availability for vCD is in this article. It is part of a series so you can learn a lot more if you wish.
PowerCLI Script to verify Hardware ESXi 7.0 Support
This article and script can be quite handy! For future vSphere 7 upgrades the built-in update planner should be handy.
vSphere 7 - Update Planner
Nigel has an interesting article about this new functionality in vSphere 7. It looks pretty cool and I cannot wait to use it!
Pre-upgrade considerations in Multi-vCenter environments
An interesting article - of a type I don’t see often - that covers off thinking about doing multi - vCSA upgrades.
vSphere 7 - Certificate Management
Bob has an interesting article on how certs are managed in vSphere 7. Some nice improvements.
Getting to know vSphere 7: A 5 part Webcast Series
This article is the launch pad for some webcasts that are good for learning.
New vCenter events for vSphere 7, VMware Cloud on AWS 1.10 and vSphere with Kubernetes
William shares with us an article about new events. He also has in it links to the full list of the events which is pretty interesting.
Useful Interactive Terminal and Graphical UI Tools for Kubernetes
William shares with us an article that has lots of useful tools in the K8’s space.
How to add the USB NIC fling to ESXi 7.0 Base Image
You can find in this article exactly how to do this. Very cool. Good info to have even if you don’t want to add the USB NIC to your image.
Troubleshooting vSphere 7 Installation - Home Lab Edition
This article is about upgrading hosts that fail with a script error. Sounds like the boot USB are too small. I use 32 GB SanDisk Ultra Fit 3.0 USB and have had no issues, including getting to vSphere 7. And I have used it for a bunch of years.
vRealize Automation 8.1 - General Enhancements (Part 2)
Some good info on the vRA 8.1 that is still fairly new. I really like the auditor role. I wish more apps had that!
Poor Man’s AutoDeploy Using Custom Kickstart, and Python
I once had just over 200 hosts and we used AutoDeploy and it was very helpful and useful. So in this article the author has several hundred hosts and no AutoDeploy. So he figured out how to do things with the least work, but with the best and consistent results. Pretty interesting.
VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols) - More Important than ever
This ESG produced white paper talks about vVols. And talks about storage too. I really like vVols and think they should be in use by even more customers - if nothing else, they sure help performance and performance troubleshooting.
Workaround ESXi CPU Unsupported Error - Part 1
An interesting article that forces ESXi 7 to work on unsupported hardware so that the author can learn.
New KB articles published for the week ending April 5th 2020
I like looking at these articles as it gives me an idea of what is commonly going wrong and maybe that will be helpful for me at some point.
vSAN Ready Nodes Additional Feature: vLCM Support
This is very cool news from John. ReadyNodes that can be patched by vLCM. Very handy and I wish my own home lab hosts could be supported. Or my work lab hosts too.
Videoconferencing Options in the Age of Pandemic
And interesting article that covers off the options for videoconferencing quite well. I am a fan of Zoom and use it. I know it has had security issues but they are slowly fixing them.
What’s Better in a Pandemic: VDI or VPN
Really well done article that talks about this.
Upgrading Veeam Availability Console to the New Veeam Service Provider Console v4
Luca has you covered for doing the upgrade in this situation. Nice article Luca!
Veeam Extract Utility - Not New but it’s a standalone download now
Michael shares that the very handy Extract utility is now downloadable. It is a super useful tool that can pull VMs out of backups. You can do that even when you don’t own Veeam any longer! So it is handy in a variety of circumstances. It has always been part of the install but you had to remember that and now you can just download it when necessary.
VMware Cloud on AWS Stretched Clusters SLA Update
This article talks about the change on VMC. I must admit I do not quite understand the change - yes SLA I know but what are the details?
Hey Fourteen: When Numbers get Siri-ous
This was quite an interesting article to see, and I had to test on my own Canadian phone what would happen when I said 14 to Siri. Oops.
Apple releases macOS 10.15.4 supplemental update with FaceTime and USB-C fixes, and more
This article talks about the supplemental update which I have updated on one Mac so far with no issues. I like the FaceTime fixes as we are starting to use that more in this house.
iOS 13.4.1 and iPadOS 13.4.1 Fix FaceTime bug
This article talks about this minor update which I have applied on one iPhone and on two iPads using iTunes with no issues. More FaceTime fixes which is good.
Thanks for reading or skimming this far,
Michael
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