Newsletter: July 18, 2020

Hello all,

I hope everyone had a good week?  And stayed safe?

This week I left NetApp.  I am sick, (not Covid-19) and so I quit to spend more time with my wife.  I am going to continue this newsletter as long as I am able. I do not have a lab any longer so this newsletter will be mostly what I do with my blog. Maybe with some travel stuff.

I have lots to share today - more than typical I think so I should get started!

Have a great week,

Michael

Stop What You’re Doing and Patch the Windows Bug that Took Microsoft 17 Years to fix
Get the full scope in this article. Many of us have already updated! Here is more info on this issue.

vSphere Releases 7.0b and 7.0bs
I have shared this article before that helps explain this but I have heard quite a bit of confusion over this lately so I share it again. Everyone who reads this, or knows me, or I know you, should install 7.0b.

vCenter Server 7.0 Tips and Tricks
Many of the tricks in this article is something most of us should know, but I am not sure about if it is a good idea to install docker on the vCSA?

VMware ESXi 7.0 - IO Devices not certified for upgrade
This article is a good reminder and has a good point - VMKLinux driver compatibility has been removed.

New Technical White Paper - Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 7.0
It is nice this TWP paper is out.  vSphere can be installed rather easily and it works good.  But for the very best performance you need to know stuff.  And that stuff is in this TWP.

Security with VMware Tools
Bob has a very interesting and useful article that can help with your security very nicely.

Is vSphere with Kubernetes available for evaluation?
William answers this questions and shows you the options you have in this article.

VMware Kubernetes Integrates and works seamlessly with vSphere Bitfusion (Part 1 of 2)
And interesting article about this interesting new technology. Being able to share GPU with VMs is cool, but with containers as well is more cool.

Switching to the Paravirtual SCSI Controller
This is a good idea - using the paravirtual SCSI controller that is - and this article will help you with that.  It provides very good performance.

If one of the address families on a dual stack Domain Controller is not enabled, adding VMware ESX hosts may fail
I had dinner once with a senior Microsoft guy and he mentioned I should never disable the IPv6 stack on Windows VMs as there were processes / services that might use them on occasion.  So I never did.  But in this article if you have you may have problems due to it when you add ESXi hosts to AD.

Configure VMware Horizon 7 to access physical machines
This article shows you how to do this. Very handy option in fact.

Install vRealize Automation (vRA) using vRealize Lifecycle Manager (vRLCM)
This article will help you get vRA working using vRLCM.  Which is not as easy as it should be!

VMware has Released NSX-V 6.4.7
This article mentions the new release and some surprising info too.

VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for ….
Check out this article (and video) to learn more about the MP for VCD Availability. Here is an article with some additional info.

What’s new with vRealize Network Insight 5.3 & vRealize Network Insight Cloud
This article talks about the new features an updates in this product and it’s cloud version.

How VMware intends to Leverage Datrium DRaaS
You can find out the answer to this via Andre in this article. Andre has a cool video to help explain things.  Interesting stuff.

Introduction to Google Cloud VMware Engine
Emad has an interesting article about this new offering.  Cool stuff.

The Best Way to Clean Battery Acid off your Gadgets
I used to do this with water that had baking soda in it.  And a very light touch.  It worked good.  But this article has a very different system that seems pretty good.

Veeam Demo Labs in Cisco DCloud
Michael talks about Veeam demo labs - which is pretty handy for test and learning - and you can learn more in this article.

Credentials Test or Job Fails when attempt to use VIX
This KB article is good for Veeam people to be aware of.  Good info.  BTW, Veeam people includes customers, partners and the Veeam people selling Veeam.

Veeam Availability Orchestrator v3: Changing the game for DR
Melissa has an article on the GA of the new version of VAO.  I love VAO and think it a splendid product - I was a big part of it when I was a Veeam.

What’s the difference between eero, eero Pro & eero Beacon
Someone was asking me about this - as I am a happy Eero user - but this article is a much better answer. I had to buy another Eero unit as I needed to improve coverage in one of our rooms.  It was so easy to add it to the existing wifi and it just worked. I do recommend Eero.

iOS 13.6, iPad 13.6, macOS 10.15.6, watchOS 6.2.8, and tvOS 13.4.8 Add New features, Car Keys, Symptom tracking
A number of updates dropped recently and you can learn more about it in this article. I believe this may be the last update before iOS 14 ships in the fall.  And it will be a big release - lots to learn. Here is some additional info on the 13.6 release.

iOS 14: Here are 7 ways iPhone is improving as a camera
I thought this article was pretty interesting.  I have used my iPhone all over the world to take pictures and it does pretty darn good.  So these improvements are interesting.

How Apple Pencil gets even better with iPadOS 14
It is nice to see all these improvements for the pencil in iPadOS 14.  I like to use my pencil.

iPadOS 14 Preview: The year of refinement
This is a particularly well done review and covers things pretty darn good.

tvOS 14 Preview: PiP, privacy and a peek into the home
This article talks about the next major release of tvOS for the Apple TV.

Why the iOS Mail app shows a phantom unread massage badge and what to do about it
I had this issue until recently - I had Outlook as my mail, and so the iOS mail was not used by it had the phantom unread count of 1.  So this article was interesting.

Apple will now offer AppleCare+ monthly plans in Australia, Canada, and Japan
I think this article talks about something that may be handy for some people.  I use AppleCare+ and think it useful. It even protects against dropping iOS device in the toilet (once).

Try out the new Apple News+ audio stories and regional newspaper with four months free
I like Apple News+ and I already get local newspapers with it, plus the world, and I lfind it handy.  The audio stories might be nice for some. Here is an article with a little more info.

Don’t Close your MacBook with a Webcam cover attached
An interesting article that can help you prevent damage to your screen.  But there is no need for a webcam cover on a Mac as the camera is pretty well protected - by the T2 chip I think. Some tools, like Trend Micro anti-virus also monitor your web camera and let you know when it is turned on.

Apple Silicon: the Passing of Wintel
This is an interesting article about the market and Apple Silicon.  And the author is someone I met when I did a lot of Apple stuff decades ago - a very smart guy.

Twitter’s massive attack: What do we know after Apple, Biden, Obama, Musk, an others tweeted a bitcoin scam
This article does a nice breakdown and sharing of the info on what happened. This was a pretty big hack and I suspect it had a few layers to it.

Thanks for reading or skimming this far,

Michael