Gabbs' Random Thoughts

Nutanix Technical Evangelist of the Year
Got an award at Nutanix GTS (Global Tech Summit).
Link to the LinkedIn post with the award.

ESXi, Workstation, & Fusion
Time to update your hosts again….
Applies to all the hypervisor products…, yes, Fusion & Workstation too.
Broadcom Support post is here.

vSphere Cluster vCPU/pCPU – control the overcommit
While you can control it in the DRS settings…
Aria Ops lets you use those metrics and view the consumption.
Blog post is here.

VMware software – things going EOS (End of Support) in 2025
VirtualUK has a nice post on this.
Short and sweet, highlights things going EOS this year.
vSphere 7? …October 2, 2025

vSphere Kubernetes Service 3.3 now GA
Remember Tanzu?
renamed again….
VMware Blog post is here.

vSAN ESA for SAP HANA
Finally….and if you know how restrictive SAP is ….well…you know.
Good timing finding this, as having this conversation later this week.
VMware Blog post is here.

AD DCs – V2V (P2V) or not?
This is a conversation I had 22 years ago, when I first used the VMware P2V tool.
…and guess what? I P2V’d an AD DC (Active Directory Domain Controller)….
…Didn’t work. Still won’t work.
P2V or V2V does allow you to move the VM…just rebuild application servers
(like AD DCs) instead of trying to convert them….
Plus, you modernize your infrastructure at the same time!

A Brief History of ESXi 2001-2025
A short 5 minute read covering the major milestones of ESX and ESXi releases….
Graham Barker’s post is here.

Disable vmnic via CLI
Haven’t done this in a while, but I know my team does during troubleshooting.
A short and direct blog post.
Blog post is here.

HashiCorp now an IBM company
Don’t forget…it’s not Terraform OR Ansible….they both have their job.
HashiCorp Blog post is here.

Synology NFS Mount for Docker Containers
Came across this, and never hurts to see a bunch of options explained.
I’ll review this next time I fire up some containers at home…
Blog post is here.

homelabbers – AMD NUC with 16 threads
Huh….8 real cores 16 threads (no performance or efficiency cores!).
DDR 5600 (128-GB via William Lam) 2 x 64GB DDR5 SODIMM
Dual NICs recognized by ESXi (I expect 8.0 only).
2 x M.2 NVMe PCIe x4 Gen 4 (2280) 
a 3rd M.2 NVMe, you can remove the WiFi adapter but you will need to purchase an M.2 A+E adapter so that you can add either an M.2 2242 or 2230 NVMe device.

NC2 on AWS – bring your own gateway
Great take for a great use case.
…abstracting the actual gateway from all the VMs.
Short read, but a good blog post!

Nutanix – Metro Availability for Volume Groups
Huh….a very interesting way to use Nutanix Volumes (iSCSI presentation of disks to VMs or physical servers).
An RPO of 0, with an RTO of ~0.
Then again, maybe I haven’t thought of it much, as many applications (like SQL Always On Availability Groups) take care of this…but at what cost.
Time to dive deeper into this use case (still takes on application clustering, but differently).

Nutanix – New Cloud Native Certification
New NCP-CN (Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Native) certification
becomes available April 22.
This is built around the NKP offering (Nutanix Kubernetes Platform), by D2IQ.
Nutanix Next post is here.

Free Learning – GitHub Repo
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
Nutanix .NEXT 2025 – May 7-9 (Washington DC)
Nutanix .NEXT 2024 Sessions
PluralSight
vBrownBag
VMware Explore 2025 – Aug 25-28, Las Vegas
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2024 Sessions (William Lam’s easier to search list version)

Nutanix Technical Evangelist of the Year
Got an award at Nutanix GTS (Global Tech Summit).
Will link to the LinkedIn post with the award, once I have a picture.

Horizon View update
don’t forget…it’s Omnissa View now….
Not an EBS release (but you can update the agent)
Be careful…all reference to VMware and Horizon have been purged.
This could cause some issues for folks, so read the release notes!
Blog post is here.
VMware (eh-heh, Broadcom…oh, wait…Omnissa) KB 6000743 is here…..

vSAN ESA with 10-GbE networking?
Well, it was not supported during GA of vSphere 8.
With the release of the AF-0 node type, it was supported.
Duncan Epping weighs in, and points to the support docs…

“Official” VMware Visio Stencils updated
Since VMware never offered these, the community to the rescue!
VirtualG UK link here.

VPC Networking with VCF NSX
one of the reasons I highlighted this was the super simple drawing on the site…
…shows a simple diagram of Isolated, Private, and Public networking concepts.
Blog post is here.

Microsoft ending WSUS?
yup.
Bleeping Computer on end of WSUS.
Bleeping Computer on end of WSUS Driver Synchronization.

VMware Exam Scaled Scoring explained
Why not just score it from 0%-100%?
Why the scaled approach from 100-500?
Not the deepest explanation, but an explanation none the less.
VMware Blog post is here.

HPE acquisition of Juniper – US DOJ sues to block
Believing that this would reduce a competitive market.
Reuters article is here.

What is Nutanix NCM?
Well, essentially, it is capabilities built into Prism Central.
Prism Central itself is “free” (as this is where licensing occurs)….
But to get any real value, that’s where NCM steps in….
A frenemy (competitor) Raj Patel has a great 2 minute write up on it.

NC2 on AWS Deployment Models
Recently updated, this covers the different approaches one might have when deploying NC2 (Nutanix Cloud Clusters) on AWS.
3 of the most common deployment types are covered.
Nutanix Documentation is here.

Nutanix – backing up Self Service
Using Self Service Runbooks and/or Blueprints?
Don’t forget to include backups into your daily operations…..
Blog post is here…

Nutanix’s NKP – using Entra ID
“…how to configure the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) solution with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), to provide single sign-on (SSO) authentication to NKP users.”
Nutanix Dev post is here.

Nutanix v4 APIs – Using API Key Authentication
Should be self explanatory….
Nutanix Dev post is here.

Nutanix Projects – Capabilities & Benefits
I’ve been a big fan of Projects in Prism Central.
Many different ways to use it, and I go through many of them in my classes.
Here’s a great summary of how to use Projects to meet your needs.
Nutanix Blog post is here.

Nutanix Guest Tools – renewing the certificates
In my lab, I rebuild ever few weeks….
…so my VMs don’t get to 1,000 days of existence…
Found a post that covers the issue, and a couple of ways to remediate.
A great use case for Automated Playbooks!
Blog post is here.

Setting up a Backplane network
Want to further isolate your HostCVMs from storage replication traffic?
(yes, this is the replication of storage within your cluster)
Blog post is here.

Nutanix AHV – Active/Backup to Active/Active
…while the cluster is online?
Here’s a blog post covering the switch config, and the AHV vSwitch config.

Continuing Education – a list of resources that come with references
(of people who have used those sites & are happy with the results).
Free Learning – GitHub Repo
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
Nutanix .NEXT 2025 – May 7-9 (Washington DC)
Nutanix .NEXT 2024 Sessions
PluralSight
vBrownBag
VMware Explore 2025 – Aug 25-28, Las Vegas
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2024 Sessions (William Lam’s easier to search list version)

Current vSphere offerings (other than VCF)
vSphere Standard
vSphere Enterprise Plus (…which is welcomed back by many)
…and of course, VVF (VMware vSphere Foundation).
VMware vSphere Product page is here.

vSphere Metrics & VCF Operations
Great free material for learning.
Link where I found this info….
Direct link to download items.

vCenter with Authentik (Open Source SAML Provider)
Cool, because you can self host it!
Open source, not officially supported, but it works, and can provide you a way to prove out process and configuration!
William Lam’s Blog post is here.

vSAN Stretched Cluster – doing site maintenance
Yes, you can do site maintenance for your stretched vSAN cluster…
It is kind of the point (to be able to lose 1 of your sites)….
Duncan Epping’s post covers some of the details.
It is a good idea to practice this, so when you need to do this, the order of operations is not a surprise….

Dynatrace acquires Runecast
Hope they keep Runecast’s core product going…
Runecast does a great job simplifying findings, and guiding for remediations…
Dynatrace News page is here.

Project SignalWave
…is a cloud native app for demonstrating apps in a K8s cluster.
Developed by people I know, I know what to expect of them….
This project is ideal for developers, architects, and DevOps engineers looking to understand and implement best practices for cloud-native development and operations.
GitHub link is here.

CentOS Linux Alternatives
I remember when CentOS announced the end of alignment with Red Hat releases…it was a few years ago….
I started using Rocky Linux for my CentOS replacement.
There are other alternatives though….
Andrea Mauro’s blog post is here.

Nutanix – Getting started with Terraform Provider
This article will focus on getting started with using the Nutanix Terraform provider & demonstrate some basic use cases.
Nutanix Dev page is here.

Nutanix – Syncing Categories across Prism Centrals
….also covers Citrix tags.
Nutanix Dev page is here.

Nutanix v4 APIs Workflows – Categories
Cover tasks such as creating VMs, associating categories, updating, deleting categories, and more.
Nutanix Dev page is here.

Nutanix & supported Partner Software
been having this conversation a lot in the past few months.
Want to see what Partner Software is “supported” in AHV?
(…and just because it is not supported explicitly, does not mean it won’t work)
When you get to the Compatibility & Interoperability Matrix, look at the top of the page, and you’ll see “Partner Software”.
Can also be downloaded to CSV…..1,135 entries right now…
Link to the Compatibility & Interoperability Matrix is here.
(you need to be logged in to myNutanix)

New Nutanix Test Drive – NCM
NCM (Nutanix Cloud Manager) focused Test Drive, focused on the capabilities of the Self Service (the old Calm product),
NCM Self-Service, NCM Intelligent Operations, NCM Cost Governance, and NCM Security Central are covered.
Nutanix Dev post is here.

Continuing Education – a list of resources that come with references
(of people who have used those sites & are happy with the results).
Free Learning – GitHub Repo
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
Nutanix .NEXT 2025 – May 7-9 (Washington DC)
Nutanix .NEXT 2024 Sessions
PluralSight
vBrownBag
VMware Explore 2025 – Aug 25-28, Las Vegas
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2024 Sessions (William Lam’s easier to search list version)

VMware VCDX is no more
As of Dec 31, 2024…..or maybe not….
Had a feeling this would happen.
On 11/25 we got that email…..linked to the FAQs…..
Read the VCDX Program FAQs from Broadcom on why.
On 11/27….we got that email that said “whoops…..pretend nothing just happened…”
Guess there is no longer a need for Enterprise Architecture with Broadcom…

Broadcom making changes….to stop VMware exodus?
Top of article:
Broadcom gives 1,500 of its 2,000 biggest customers back to channel partners
The company hopes partners will be able to offer customers better deals
It’s all in an effort to stop losing VMware customer
Wow…..so Broadcom reverse its directly play….
instead of taking 2,000 customers direct (and away from partners)…
They are now only taking 500 customers direct (and away from partners)…
I think they bit off more than they can chew…..
Is it too little too late?…not for me to decide.
Tech Radar post is here.

CompTIA Purchased…
…by HIG Capital & Thoma Bravo
Weird timing….
CompTIA Press announcement here.

Broadcom VMware Script for Cores & TB
The script that is used when its time to renew got updated.
This now follows the new rules of VVF with 250-GB of vSAN per core.
Direct link to the script is here.

SIOC (Storage I/O Control) is no more
World
You can still have the SIOC functionality, but to use it, you’ll need to create a Storage Policy (only way it can be done from here on out).
that being said….I don’t know too many people who limit IOPs for VMs, but I do know a lot of people who appreciated the Storage DRS IO load balancing.
Duncan Epping’s post is here.

VMware Links – old & new
William Lam’s post covers many useful links.
What the old VMware link was, and what it is now under Broadcom.
Good reference point.

Amazon EVS (Elastic VMware Service)
Yea, new name, nearly similar VMConAWS.
Since the rules have changed under Broadcom, VMConAWS had some new licensing restrictions preventing folks from using the Elastic Capacity of the service (unless of course you prebuy licenses…which negates the point of Elastic Capacity).
AWS Blog post is here.

Veeam 12.3 – what / how to upgrade
Yea….you should update….
Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3 Release Notes are here.

NH Ranked FREEST State for 23 years running….
I love the “Live Free or Die” state….
Random blog post is here.

Nutanix AHV Networking Best Practices
Always bring this out when planning any engagement/deployment.
Nutanix AHV Networking Best Practices are here.

Ntuanix Prism Central, AOS, & AHV – New Releases
New versioning scheme for AOS and AHV…
My favorite?…. managing all your clusters’ LCM in Prism Central LCM!!!!
Cloud KMS, API v4, MST (Multicloud Snapshot Technology), VM Anti-Affinity policies, new CPU support, and of course, more NVIDIA support….and more.
Did an upgrade, and new deployments with it….
For me…had to switch to Firefox for a functional browser….
Prism Central 2024.3 release notes are here (requires login)
AOS 7.0 release notes are here (requires login)
AHV 10.0 release notes are here (requires login)

Continuing Education – a list of resources that come with references
(of people who have used those sites & are happy with the results).
Free Learning – GitHub Repo
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
Nutanix .NEXT 2024 Sessions
PluralSight
vBrownBag
VMware Explore 2025 – Aug 25-28, Las Vegas
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2024 Sessions (William Lam’s easier to search list version)

VMware Workstation Pro & Fusion Pro ….now free to all!
Not expecting this….
This used to be free for personal use.
NOW….free for all use, commercial included!!!
VMware has made it so that all desktop hypervisors are free.
Create you account on Broadcom’s site, and get your free license.
VMware Blog post is here.

VMware (cough, Broadcom) Offers Customers what they want
ESXi (Enterprise Plus) and vCenter.
VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus is back!
Yup, that is the name of the licensing edition, according to this post.
Will it be too little too late for some?
VCF is still the full stack.
VVF is Ent+, vCenter, Aria Operations, and vSAN (though now up to 250-GB/core of entitlement).
No word if VVF vSAN entitlements will carry over if you need more capacity.
There is a licensing PFD, but it is not accurate, so not linked here.

“Free” VCF Licenses for VMUG Advantage members.
You’ll have to scroll a bit in this VMware post to find it….
But, if you pay to join VMUG Advantage (VMUG is free to join…VMUG Advantage gets you some minor benefits), AND you take and pass a VCP (or VCAP) VCF exam….still, at $210 (as of today) not a bad investment in yourself.
You will get 3 years of VCF licensing for your lab (not for production use).
But….it’s only 64 cores worth….

VMware Tools 12.5.0 released
VMware Tools (or open-vm-tools for Linux distros) is important for every OS that you run as a VMware VM.
The latest update is now available.
Maybe someday, VMware & Micrsoft can work together, and get all this as part of the Windows install media, and Windows Update, just like the Linux community did years ago…..
Noteable…. no more 32-bit OS support.
You need this version minimum for Windows Server 2025.
VMware Blog post is here.

VDI – HPE Anywhere now supports Nutanix
Many of us are waiting for Omnissa to support AHV for VDI.
Well, some of that already exists (only manual desktops for now).
The HPE alternative exists today.
Nutanix Blog post is here.

How to mount a VMDK file on your desktop
Forgot this was a possiblity, but then again, how often do we REALLY need to do this?
Anyway, a short post that covers how to use 7-Zip to do this on your Windows desktop (or any Windows VM instance).

Windows Patch breaks SSH connections
“OpenSSH (Open Secure Shell) service fails to start, preventing SSH connections”
The way I read that….sounds like it is preventing incoming SSH sessions…..
Bleeping Computer post is here.

Windows 11 Arm64 – Download the ISO
Finally….easy to get it….
Microsoft link is here.

Windows 2025 – vSphere support
Now officially supported in vSphere 7.0 Update3 and later.
VMware Blog post is here.
Note that Paravirtual SCSI Driver and VMXNET3 driver are on the Windows 2025 installation media now!

Road Warrior & need a 2nd monitor?
This is something I came across during the last week.
for the modern laptop road warrior….
A traveling 15” (they have 17” too) display.
What I think makes it unique is how the stand can be positioned, and how it then folds flat.
Espresso Displays link here.

Nutanix GPT in a box
Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box (Nutanix page)
Gettting asked for this, and being able to deliver is great!

Nutanix AI on all platforms
So many acronyms for all the pubic and private clouds.
Nutanix’s D2IQ (which is now called Nutanix Kubernetes Platform).
Nutanix Blog post is here.

Continuing Education – a list of resources that come with references
(of people who have used those sites & are happy with the results).
Free Learning – GitHub Repo
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
Nutanix .NEXT 2024 Sessions
PluralSight
vBrownBag
VMware Explore 2025 – Aug 25-28, Las Vegas
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2024 Sessions (William Lam’s easier to search list version)

Nvidia to Join Dow Jones, replacing Intel
Wow.
CNBC Story is here.

Google Cloud – issues with europe-west3 region
Just a reminder…the cloud is just someone else’s datacenter.
Something will go wrong or go down at some point….Design for it!
for 1/2 a day the datacenter, europe-west3-c, was down.
The Register article is here.

vCenter Patches released
vCenter 7 Release Notes are here.
vCenter 8 Update 2e Release Notes are here.
vCenter 8 Update 3d Release Notes are here.

Patching ESXi hosts without rebooting…
Technically it is called, ESXi Live Patching.
Must be setup in LCM –> Settings –> Cluster Lifecycle –> Images
If not configured here, won’t be an option to utilize this.
There are some limitations (like VMs with Direct Path I/O)
Also noted a new checkbox there….
Prevent remediation if hardware compatibility issues are found
I like that!
Note that this does NOT apply to baselines…only Image Based Clusters.
Blog post is here….

Unofficial Omnissa Visio Stencils
Ivan de Mes posted about this.
Has both Visio & Draw.IO stencils…

Nutanix adds support for vSAN Ready Nodes
“Nutanix now supports the reuse of certain vSAN Ready Node hardware…”
Hope I don’t need to elaborate on why this is cool…
Nutanix Blog post is here.

Nutanix VLANs – Migration from VLAN Basic to VLAN
VLAN Basic is what most Nutanix users are using today.
VLAN is the term used for subnets, once you have enabled the Network Controller (used to be called Advanced Networking), and have enabled VPC and Micro segmentation.
couple of nuances to call out….
Prism Central must stay on a VLAN Basic subnet.
Migration is pretty seemless.
Nutanix Documentation is here.

Get Snapshot info in Prism Central
Jeroen Tielen recently posted about how to configure this custom view.
I had completely forgotten about this!

Nutanix Leap – running post failover scripts on VMs
Found this blog post that is using Change DNS Servers as the post failover sript.
Nicely written example!
Now remember….you can add anything in the post failover script, not just DNS Server updates….

Continuing Education – a list of resources that come with references
(of people who have used those sites & are happy with the results).
Free Learning – GitHub Repo
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
Nutanix .NEXT 2024 Sessions
PluralSight
vBrownBag
VMware Explore 2025 – Aug 25-28, Las Vegas
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2024 Sessions (William Lam’s easier to search list version)

vCenter 8.0 Update 3c released
bug fix, but an important bug fix with forcing you to clear cookies.
vCenter Release Notes are here.

New vCLS Architecture in vSphere 8.0 Update 3
In case you are wondering WHY you have fewer vCLS VMs….
Duncan Epping elaborates on the topic.

VMware TKG (Tanzu Kuberenets Grid) 3.2 released
Just make sure you’re up to date before upgrading.
TKG Release Notes are here.

NVMe Tiering – reporting with PowerShell
OK, technically with PowerCLI….
I keep saying….NVMe tiering will have an impact on how we design and size ESXi hosts, as memory is often very overallocated….
William Lam’s post is here.

RVTools gets updated
4.7.1 is the new version.
Fixed a couple of my minor issues with this release….
Release Notes are here.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 – Architecture
You can install Veeam on a server, and backup your VMs, true.
What I saw here, was a reminder about our architectural decisions that we make all the time, but may take for granted.
Tim Smith’s post is here.

Kubecolor – add some color to your kubectl commands
Available on Github.
Does what it says.

Winamp is now open source!
Wow….Was my media player for many years.
…and after so many rebuilds of my PC back then….taught me how to embed metadata into my MP3 files (which then carried on into other aspects of my IT career).
Github link is here.

Windows 11 in reboot loop / blue screen?
Microsoft is working on resolving the issue that appears when Windows 11 KB5043145 is applied.
BleepingComputer link is here.
While we are on Windows 11…here’s a link on how to build a Windows 11 system without a Windows account (meaning a local account only)….

Nutanix AOS 6.10 released
So many little benefits over the past years with STS all rolled up!
NGT using IP-less communications now (well, since 6.6).
AOS 6.10 Release Notes are here. (login required)

Continuing Education – a list of resources that come with references
(of people who have used those sites & are happy with the results).
Free Learning – GitHub Repo
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
Nutanix .NEXT 2024 Sessions
PluralSight
vBrownBag
VMware Explore 2025 – Aug 25-28, Las Vegas
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2024 Sessions (William Lam’s easier to search list version)