vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 – End of General Support
Why do I keep posting this?
I do not want anyone to be surprised….
Don’t forget that vSphere 6 is phasing out, and that most people should be moving to vSphere 7.
Customer buying new hardware, & asking for ESXi 6.5 installs are being met with surprises, as the hardware doesn’t support ESXi 6.5…..forcing the upgrade path.
So far, vSphere 7.0.3 Update 3f (July release) seems to be very stable.
vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 End Of General Support ends October 15, 2022
This only leaves 6 weeks to get to vSphere 7.
….and vSphere 8 was just announced…
VMware End of Support pages are here.
Don’t forget that SD cards are no longer recommended by VMware!
That means you need SSD or NVMe for boot drives now!
VMware Explore 2022
…
You can now visit the VMware Explore landing page, and get access to all the content (with a VMware login)….keynotes, sessions,
As of 9/2, 410 out of 458 sessions have been posted online.
William Lam has already published his GitHub page making searching a bit easier.
vBrownbag has all the VMTN Community Talks on its YouTube Channel.
vSphere 8 announced
World
vSphere Distributed Service Engine, which enables DPU support, not only to offload management (such as ESXi), but also vDS and NSX functions.
Link to the vSphere Distributed Service Engine HOL.
Tight integration with TKG 2.0 (Tanzu Kubernetes Grid)
Better GPU support.
vSphere 8 is the last version to support “baselines” via Update Manager functions within the vSphere Lifecycle Manager….this means folks need to plan their ESXi hardware at a cluster level from now on!!!
vSphere Configuration Profiles are the new Host Profiles (don’t worry, host profiles will live on in vSphere 8 for the time being).
TLS 1.2 only!!!!
TPM 1.2 hardware is no longer supported (you can still upgrade though…hmmm)
Cloning VMs with a vTPM will be able to replace vTPMs during the clone (enabled by vpxd.clone.tpmProvisionPolicy VMX setting configured to replace by the vTPM by default).
Tune the vNUMA config of a VM.
VMware Blog post is here.
VMware What’s New in vSphere 8 is here.
vSphere 8 Core Storage – what’s new post is here.
Cormac Hogan’s thoughts are here for vSphere 8 and vSAN 8.
Duncan Epping thoughts are here.
VMware RRaaS (Ransomware Recovery as a Service)
Technically, it is VMware Ransomeware Recovery for VMware Cloud DR.
This is a very well written post covering the problem itself, the problems in the recovery of operations, and how to standardize the recovery process.
Built in next-Gen AV and behavioral analysis of your data.
30 minute RPO (not sure how long you can retain data for though).
VMware Blog post is here.
VMC on AWS – What’s New at VMware Explore?
New hardware instance available (128 cores, 1-TB RAM, 30-TB RAW NVMe, up to 75-Gbps).
VMware Cloud Flex Storage, which simply is being able to scale up your storage without needing to add more hosts.
VMware Cloud Flex Compute, simply put, instead of “purchasing” a host, you can purchase smaller units of consumption.
There are so many things, check out the blog post.
VMware Blog post is here.
vSphere+
With vSphere 8, some new enhancements will come to this new offering.
A simple way to deploy VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery add-on.
A simple way to deploy vROPs add-on.
vSAN 8 announced
One of the big ones (for me) is the new ESA.
ESA (Express Storage Architecture) removes the concept of Cache & Capacity disks, and allows your all NVMe TLC flash drives to all participate to capacity (if you know Nutanix, it looks like that). No more disk groups, as it each host now has a Storage Pool.
OSA (Original Storage Architecture) is still here in vSphere 8, so not to worry…at least for now…I can see this going away in a future version, as this was built for SAS/SATA drives (spinning drives) years ago.
RAID5/6 configurations get performance enhancements.
100x faster VM snapshot cleanup (yea, that sounds too good to be true).
VMware Blog post is here.
Cormac Hogan’s thoughts are here for vSphere 8 and vSAN 8.
Duncan Epping thoughts are here.
TKG 2.0
TKG (Tanzu Kubernetes Grid) 2.0 with vSphere 8 is coming.
With TKG’s new Workload Availability Zones, you are able to split your workload across 3 clusters (AZs).
Support for VM or container based workloads.
VMware Blog post is here.
Tanzu at VMware Explore
Viktor van den Berg (VCDX #121) already had a great run down of all the Tanzu highlights at VMware Explore written out…..
There are many things related to Tanzu announced last week.
Check out his post covering all things Tanzu from last week!
VMware Blog Post, What’s New in Tanzu, is here.
VMware Aria – Cloud Management
so let’s change some names….
(my OCD will force me to have to update quite a few DNS entries)…
The messaging at VMworld was: “Unified Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Management”
VMware Aria Automation (vRealize Automation)
VMware Aria Operations (vRealize Operations)
VMware Aria Operations for Networks (vRealize Network Insight)
VMware Aria Operations for Logs (vRealize Log Insight)
VMware Aria Operations for Secure Clouds (CloudHealth Secure State)
VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth (CloudHealth)
How Aria Graph API first approach provides a consolidate view of applications across multiple clouds.
How Aria Migration helps you plan where you want to run your workloads (I am guessing this is part of Aria Operations or Aria Cost).
VMware Blog post is here.
Better yet, VirtualizationHowTo covers it best (my opinion).
VMware Horizon Cloud – the next generation…
Less things to deploy on your “pods” (on prep & in the cloud).
Horizon Edge will support up to 20,000 users across four Azure subscriptions.
VMware Blog post is here.
Lots of additional links in the blog post…
VMware Tools – CVE – Patch to version 12.1.0
Noticed this post on the AngrySysOps.com blog.
Easy enough to deploy.
Lifecycle Manager (Update Manager) includes this fix in the Non-Critical patches….Remediate your hosts to get VMware Tools 12.1.0 available.
Then, you can use whatever method you’d like to update VMware Tools for your VMs….
VMware Tools release notes are here.
VMware Cloud – Landing Page
So with all the new names & releases, this is a good page to get a jumpstart on the VMware Products.
Looks like a great place to find info on the different offerings, Hands on Labs, data sheets,
Check out the VMware Cloud page here.
Free VMware Accreditation – Credly Badges
Laurens van Duijn recently posted on his site about some free accreditation badges from VMware IT Academy.
VMware Skyline Advisor Pro Technologist badge
IT Academy: Software Defined Storage Concepts
IT Academy: Network Virtualization Concepts
IT Academy: Cloud and Virtualization Concepts
Direct link to the US landing page for IT Academy.
New VMware VCP track – Cloud Operations
Well, the exam details call out vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight, & vRealize Lifecycle Manager…..all about to be renamed under the Aria name.
VCP – Cloud Operations exam info is here.
Nutanix AOS 6.5 Training & Certification Updates
Free exams for NCP-MCI 6.5 now, so take advantage!
Nutanix Blog post is here.
Nutanix v4 API – early access
Mostly for developers, but it gives a good look at what’s coming into Prism in the next few releases….
Thanks Magnus Andersson for posting this!
Continuing Education – a list of resources that come with references
(of people who have used those sites & are happy with the results).
VMware Explore 2022 Europe – November 7 – November 11
HashiCorp Learn
Kode Kloud
KubeAcademy
Nutanix University
PluralSight / A Cloud Guru (PluralSight purchased A Cloud Guru)
Udemy
vBrownBag
VMware Customer Connect Learning (old VMware Learning Zone)
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2022 (sessions)
VMware Explore VMTN Sessions (vBrownBag)