Virtual Updates 2024-11-04

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)

Virtual Updates 2024-10-14

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)

Virtual Updates 2024-09-23

AT&T Suing Broadcom over VMware Licensing?
Not sure how this will play out, but it IS interesting….
AT&T suing Broadcom about support for existing licensing commitments….
Caveat here is AT&T didn’t meet timelines, so not sure how I WOULD take this….
3 different takes….
TechSpot article here.
The Register article here.
ArsTechnica article here.

VMware vCenter 7 & 8 gets updated.
New CVE remediation needed (a 9.8 CVE rating).
Update your vCenter Servers soon.
VMware vCenter 7 Release Notes are here.
VMware vCenter 8 Release Notes are here.
ESXi 8 Release Notes are here.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2024-09-23”

Virtual Updates 2024-09-02

VMware Explore last week
It was very obvious that this was a smaller conference than in years past.
An interesting statement from Hock Tan….
“…taking workloads back from the public cloud.”
Azure, AWS, and GCP must be livid!!!!
Hands On Labs is offline until Sept 3, and will have the latest labs available.
Looking forward to the HOLs being released next week.
Note that session recordings are released already….
I like William Lam’s listing of the session recordings better….

VMware Explore 2025 – already scheduled
August 25-28, 2025
Las Vegas at The Venetian.
VMware Blog post is here.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2024-09-02”

Virtual Updates 2024-08-05

vSphere 7 support extended!
Was April 2, 2025…is now October 2, 2025.
That will defiantly help a few folks out….
This Broadcom Lifecycle Support Portal link does require you to login to the Broadcom Support portal….

VMware Skyline Advisor – End of Life
Kinda saw this one coming…
While killing Skyline Advisor as a product, the functionality is being moved into the VCF and VVF stacks via Aria Operations 8.18.
Please read, if you use any of the Skyline products.
Broadcom FAQ page is here.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2024-08-05”

Virtual Updates 2024-07-22

Multiple Account Hacks….AT&T, UnitedHealth Group
Couple of big hacks….
In April 2024, AT&T “learned” that data from May 2022 to October 2022 was leaked….who called who, texted, etc. Seems serious.
An article about AT&T.
An article about UnitedHealth Group.

Crowdstrike causes international BSOD event
Friday July 19th, IT teams work up and wondered why nothing worked…
Technical details from Crowdstrike.
Jon Towles post on using InTune for remediation.
Omnissa post on remediation for Horizon Pools.
William Lam post on using vSphere API to automate VM Console interaction.
Microsoft’s new Recovery Tool, created for this incident…

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2024-07-22”