Newsletter: 6 February, 2021

Hello everyone,

I hope this finds everyone well and safe.  Things are good for my wife and I.  Staying home but for a daily walk. I keep hearing in the US and Canada about people having parties and so I really don’t know when things will get back to a new normal. I want our US - Canadian border to open so I can visit Sedona, AZ and walk again in the desert. It won’t be the same if I have to do it in a wheelchair.

I am waiting to hear if I am back in vExpert so I have access to bits and licenses again. Very excited to work with vRA again and upgrade to current versions too. I also need View working properly so I can connect to my lab from wherever. I hope I get in.

I did a couple of articles on ALS that I hope other people with ALS find helpful - you can find them all using this link.

I suspect I might be a little late with this and I apologize.  My wife and I are on PTO in Canmore for a break, and the weather has been nuts and made the drive a lot harder. The weather is amazing, we had zero visibility in some of the driving! And today cannot see the mountains or much around us.

BTW, here is a link to a podcast I help with sometimes.

But I have lots of stuff to share so lets get started!

Have a great week, and stay safe!

Michael

What is new in vRealize Log Insight 8.3
In this article you can learn more about this new release of Log Insight.  I love the tool and not just because it works so well, but because I was there and helped when it was born. I think everyone should have and use this tool - solving problems when all your logs are on the same time scale is pretty nice.

New Release - VMware PowerCLI 12.2
This sounds like a very big release and there is a lot of new functionality in it.  See the whole list in this article.

PowerCLI - Delete Port Groups using a CSV List
This article shows some interesting PowerCLI that I think is quite useful.

Announcing VMware Cloud Foundation 4.2
This article will help you learn a bit about this new release but this release is not available yet so don’t get too excited yet. I really like the idea of VCP but I have never put my hands on it so I am not sure.

What’s New in NSX-T 3.1.1
You can see what is new in this recent release via this article. There is a lot of new stuff including some very cool features.

NSX Security Reference Design Guide
With the complexity of NSX this guide might be very useful.

VMware Skyline Health Diagnostics
I think that Skyline is amazing, and something that all customers should be running.  It can be very helpful with becoming proactive and solving problems faster. You can learn more about it here.

Bitfusion from vSphere: Why you need a GPU Acceleration Platform
This article does a nice job of explaining things.

ESXi 7 cluster image management
This article will help you get started with single image usage in your cluster which is a good idea - it is good for support and reliability.

#vRealizeChat: Meet vRealize Cloud Universal
This is not what the title implies - it is not about a cloud per se but rather apps and you can learn more in this article.

Introduction to vSAN Data Persistence Platform (DPp)
In this article you can learn about what DPp is and how powerful it is. It sounds pretty amazing to me and the author does a nice job of explaining it.

vSAN 7 U1 Component Placement
This article does a nice job explaining and talking about component placement differences in vSAN 7 U1.

vSAN 6.7 U1 ebook available 4.99 USD and paper copy for 19.99
Duncan shares out you can get this book for a nicely discounted price.  I have it and it is a very good book.

How we Provide Smooth Signature Support in VMware Horizon
This article will help you get smooth signatures in Horizon and show you some really bad ones too.

Introducing VMware vRealize Automation 8.3 Standard Plus
This new edition of vRA is a little different sounding - seems like maybe targeted for Salt Stack. But learn all about in in this article.

Introducing vRealize Automation Property Groups
This new functionality sounds pretty useful - learn more in this article.

What’s New with vRealize Automation 8.3 - Technical Overview
Learn all about this big new release of vRA in this article.  I cannot wait to play with it myself!

Discover How VMware IT Migrates Mission Critical Apps to improve Disaster Recovery
You can learn more about how VMware has done this in this article.  I am still not convinced that cloud is the best place to do DR. It is a good option, but you need to really look hard at security, and how good the vendor keeps things running! Plus, often everyone works from home after a bad disaster to so can they get to their apps in the cloud from home easily?

PrimaryIO Hybrid Cloud Data Management for VMware Cloud Director
This PrimaryIO tool can help move apps into the cloud or out of it quite easily. Looks very interesting. Learn more in this article.

Google Authentication with VMware Cloud Director (OAuth)
This is not the most easy auth to use with vCD but if you wish to use it the full details are in this article by a guy who really knows vCD.

VMware Cloud Director Availability Disaster Recovery to Cloud Service recommendations
This article is about creating a Cloud service as a DR destination for people.

VCF 4.x - “Failed to Assign Role Admin to ESXi user”
This article talks about a failure and how to deal with it.

Packet drop issue on HP Gen 9 / Gen 10 servers running ESXi 6.7
This article will explain the issue, and the solution.  This problem may occur for all users of these servers so this article is pretty handy.

VMware vCenter 7.0.1 Update Failed - Exception occurred in Install PreCheck Phase
This article talks about an upgrade issue, and how to deal with it.

HomeLab Stage XLIX: Dell & VMware Integration’s
In this article you can learn more about Dell and VMware integration’s. It is quite the homelab. I have had several labs over the years with Dell and I liked them.  But now I am a user of SuperMicro and really like it.

Customize vSphere 7 with Tanzu Guest Clusters
A very interesting article that has some very good ideas I think. Good stuff.

Retro DOS Games on Kubernetes
William will help you get old DOS games working on K8’s - which is amazing!

Introducing the vSphere UI Community Team
This is good to see but it is also a little worrisome too.  I hope someone tough is in charge or they will end up being very distracted by people commenting and complaining. It is about trends, not one of complainers.

Installing Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Platform
Luca has you covered in this article with getting this new product working in the Google Cloud.

Veeam Backup & Replication Version 10 at a glance poster
If you need a poster that shows you all the new stuff and has some details too, you should check out this article.

Deep Dive on Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 v5: Now with Microsoft Teams backup
This article will help you to be prepared to backup Teams data while doing MBO backup.

What’s In the Studio - Pivoting Community Involvement to Video
Sean has an interesting article about his video setup with some good learning, but he also shares out some amazing pictures too!

See red squares on your Mac display? There might be an issue with the GPU
Learn more about this odd issue and odd symptom in this article.

IOS 14: How to use the Headphone Audio Customization Feature
This article will show you how to use the audio customization which I did not know about.  Nice stuff!

VMware Fusion 12 Review: Now free for Home Users
This article will explain a few things about Fusion and how it is free.

Recent root-giving Sudo bug also impacts macOS
This article provides additional info on this security issue.

iOS 14.4’s HomePod proximity notifications driving you nuts? Here is how to turn them off
This article will help you turn off these notifications but I can add no one in my house - with three HomePods has been irritated with the notifications.

How I automated my CI/CD pipeline with Google Cloud Run, Cloud Build and Git Hub
Andre has written an article about his development process. It is used for his VDI Sizer and other stuff.

BackBlaze Hard Drive Stats for 2020
I really like BackBlaze and use them for the offsite component of our backup strategy but I also like the hard drive status.  When I need a hard drive I use that list to select what one to buy.

Best home weather station: Which one should be your personal meteorologist?
This article can help you pick out which weather station you would like to have in your yard.

Apple Speeds up masked Face ID by detecting an Apple Watch in iOS 14.5
This article talks about a new feature that will be very useful.

Website Security Guide - Protection Tips
You can learn more about some of the things that are problems for web sites, and how to protect your site better via this article.

To enable Zero Trust, Rethink your Firewall Strategy
To access this whitepaper and learn more about zero trust you can find it right here.

Thanks for reading or skimming this far,

Michael

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