Newsletter: February 27, 2021

Hello all,

I hope this finds everyone safe and happy? COVID is starting to get a little worse, and things are opening up which is odd.  My wife and I stay at home - except for our daily walk.

I did an article recently on some odd African trees that Walt Disney uses in his scary animated stuff. They are called Baobub trees and the article is here. They are great to see in Africa in stormy nights.

Veeam had a very big announcement and it sounds all pretty cool so I have a few articles about it. It is too bad I don’t have a lab any longer as I would love to try it all out!

I have lots to share, and want to get started so here we go. In fact, I have so much to share I may be a little late getting it out.

Have a great week, and stay safe!

Michael

Cloud Disaster Recovery Options for VMware Virtual Machine
This article is good info all about DR and mostly about Cloud. I have said it before, but when you fail over to the cloud, how do your users access the apps and data?  If your office building is gone or without power they will be at home.  You need to plan for that too.

VMware Disaster Recovery as a Service: Technical Deep Dive
If you are thinking about using the cloud you should check this deep dive out. I worry about people using the Cloud for DR as it requires much more thought and planning.  For example, if the building is gone, and everyone has to work at home, how do they all get into the cloud?

What’s New in vRealize Log Insight Cloud - February 2021 Update
This article has the info on the new version of Log Insight cloud edition. Some good stuff, and I really am impressed with how they did the failed login alert - it is exactly how I would have.

vRealize Operations Manager shutdown order
This article is about the shutdown order of the cluster. I have not ever worked with a vROps cluster.

How to build a vROps dashboard for tracking Total VMs deployed and Growth Trend
Dean will help you with this kind of dashboard - which he is pretty good at. See the article for the full info.

VMware HCX 4.0 now available
This new version sounds pretty good - here are the release notes.

VMware Skyline Health Diagnostics for vSphere
This article talks about how Skyline can help with dealing with problems.  The flow charts are pretty good. I am a big believer in Skyline and think all customers should have it!

Horizon Apps Subscription
You can learn more about the subscription idea in this article.

Workspace ONE Access and Office 365 Integration with Azure AD and tear down notes
This article has lots of info and is interesting too.  Quite helpful too.

vSphere with Tanzu backup/restore with Velero vSphere Operator
Cormac explains how this works in this article.

How to update vCenter 7 using the Update Planner
This article shows how to use the update planner during an upgrade cycle.  Pretty handy I think.

Understanding Clones in VMware vSphere 7
This technical white paper will also talk about performance of those clones.

What is this Catalog folder on my datastore?
Duncan answers this important question and even has a link for more learning.

Conclusion #3: vSAN compression-only is nearly penalty-free
See more about this statement in this article.

The Fast Lane for Data Transfer - Paravirtual RDMA (PVRDMA) Support for native endpoints
An interesting article that is about very fast data transport while not using CPU or OS.

Photon 4.0 Release Announcement
You can learn more about this release, and where to get it, from this article. I like Photon as it is easy and free to work with and so it is good for VMs when I need numbers of VMs.

Align your partitions with VMware Converter 5.0 beta
Learn more about this topic and product in this interesting article. It has been a long time, but I used to do a lot of work with Converter.

Introducing Google Cloud VMware Engine Logical Design Poster for workload mobility
An interesting article and an amazing poster can be found right here. If I was working in this space that poster - at full size, and in full color would be very close at hand!

Introducing the VMware Cloud Ready Framework
Interesting article on this subject. It also links to a whitepaper as wll.

VCSA Upgrade Error A problem occured while getting data from source vCenter Server
This article explains the problem and provides a solution as well.

Veeam Backup & Replication v11: Accelerate Your Journey
Danny has an article that is an overview of everything. Some very cool stuff - like a Mac agent for backups!

V11: Immutable primary backup storage with a hardware-agnostic touch
This article does a nice job of explaining what this is, and what you need to achieve it.  Immutable backups is a very good thing - nothing can destroy them.

V11: Delivering low RTO for tier One applications with Veeam CDP
This article talks about CDP which is a very cool feature.  I remember working with it in alpha and it was amazing.

New in Veeam VBR v11: Combine vSphere tags
This article will show you how to combine tags for backup job selection.

Veeam: Veeam Backup for Azure v2
You can learn more about this product in this most excellent video.

Learning to say No and deal with Stress in IT
I spent a decade almost as a professional services guy, and I had to say no somewhat often when the customer asked me to build something in a bad way, or build something that would not be useful.  So being able to say no was important but also being able to explain why too.  This article talks about saying no.

When Selecting a big hard drive for your homelab’s VMware ESXi VMFS datastore, consider the 512e over the 4Kn version
Paul covers off this subject in detail and has some good suggestions too.

Change ESXi Root password using ESXCLI through PowerShell
Interesting process and script to do this, and pretty easy too!  Full info in this article.

A First Look into Azure VMware Solution
This article will introduce this topic to you and share some good info on it. Nice diagram but the VMware part of it is only 6.7 U3. It sounds like a nice solution.

Apple Releases macOS Big Sur 11.2.2 to protect newer Mac’s from bad USB-C hubs
You can learn more about this issue and patch in this article. Glad Apple is helping us with these bad hubs.

How to make macOS apps available to a single user instead of all users
This article might be useful for some of you - having apps that only one user on your Mac can use.

Exploring Your Mac’s Restarts via the Command Line
This article showed me how to do this.  Is quite interesting and easy.

How to start up your M1 Mac from an external drive
It is not quite what you expect so it is good to have this article to help.  I am still very happy with my M1 MBA.

How to get more from Spotlight on the Mac
I had no idea that Spotlight could do all this stuff.  Show me the weather is a nice one! See the article for more info.

The Role of Bootable Duplicates in a Modern Backup Strategy
A very interesting article that teaches you about Big Sur as well as educate you on clones and backup stuff.

Setting up WireGuard for AWS VPC access
Scott shows you what he has done with Wireguard in this article.  I like Wireguard and have used it in the past.  Worked good on my Mac.

Microsoft Active Directory Documentation script
This script is most useful and I quite like it. It has been updated and you can learn more about it in this article.

“Never Enough”: A Navy Seal Commander on living a life of Excellence
This ex-SEAL works at VMware and has an article about what it means being an ex-SEAL and a leader. Some good points.

VMware Carbon Black Named to the 2021 CRN Security 100 List
This is good news and I am not surprised either.  See the announcement.

Infrastructure Hygiene: Why it’s critical for protection
This article is interesting and has a number of good points.

Malwarebytes Reports on the State of Mac Malware in 2020
This article was interesting as things are not quite what they seemed. It does mean that even Macs need AV software.

Sandbox detection and evasion techniques. How malware has evolved over the last 10 years
An interesting article that is quite educational and can help design security for your environment.

More than 6,700 VMware servers exposed online and vulnerable to major new bug
I am very surprised to hear that there is 6700 VMware servers visible on the web.  I am in fact not even sure if that is the truth.  But this article is still interesting.

Thanks for reading or skimming this far!

Michael

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