VTUG Winter Warmer 2019
I am sure people are looking forward to this event!
Thursday, January 24 2019
Gillette Stadium, 1 Patriot Place, Foxboro, MA
Register Here!
vSphere Platinum
I already have Enterprise Plus licensing, so why would I need this?
The inclusion of AppDefense.
AppDefense focuses on whitelisting applications “normal” behavior, and helps keep a good focus on the internal security practices.
Plus, there are some cost savings….
You can get a 50% discount on the upgrade to Platinum
You can get up to 65% discount on vROPs upgrades
You can get $10,000 VMware on AWS credits.
Let me know if you need to review the details of this in detail.
…and to coincide with this, the vCloud Suite (which includes vRealize Suite and vSphere Enterprise Plus) now has a Platinum offering as well!
VMworld 2018 EMEA
….was this past week. Lots of announcements.
VMware Cloud Foundation 3.5
VMware on AWS in all AWS regions, by end of 2019
vRealize Network Insight 4.0 (hybrid-multi-cloud support!)
VMware PKS
CloudHealth was acquired.
Heptio was acquired (all about PKS ease & scale).
….and of course, more about ESXi running on ARM (and Raspberry PIs!)
VMware Cloud Foundation 3.5
Pretty current release!
vSphere 6.7 Update 1
vSAN 6.7 Update 1
NSX (6.4.3 for NSX-V, and 2.3 for NSX-T)
vRealize Automation 7.5
vRealize Operations 7.0
vRealize Log Insight 4.7
All managed with the latest SDDC Manager and vRealize Lifecycle Manager.
Want to deploy AND manage your SDDC?
This is the a great way to do so.
vRealize Network Insight 4.0
Announced at VMworld this past week, the next iteration of vRNI will soon be available. For the on-prem SDDC and AWS environments, vRNI 4.0 adds hybrid cloud troubleshooting (you can trace the path of 2 VMs, 2 EC2 instances, or a VM to EC2 communication).
Add to that NSX-T topology visualization and troubleshooting, with visibility into Cisco ACI underlay and Cisco ASA firewalls.
You can read the announcement here.
ESXi on a Raspberry Pi?
Yup! I can see all the home lab folks, getting excited about this.
Running ESXi on a Raspberry Pi could be huge for not only the IoT, but also for us home lab enthusiasts. It could dramatically change the cost of running home labs.
William Lam has a great writeup (as usual) of it here, with references and links aplenty.
Even with the excitement on home lab use, the real play here is Edge computing.
vSAN Data Protection, File Services, & Cloud Native Storage
Currently in Beta to help meet the promised 2019 release.
Looking forward to having vSAN datastore capable of replication without the vSphere Replication appliance.
File Services could be good if it supports SMB and NFS out of the gate (especially for those VDI implementations).
…and Cloud Native Storage (let’s just speculate on this right now).
Again, coming sometime in 2019 if things go as planned.
VMware Flings worth noting
vSphere PKS Plugin
provides a user interface for managing and monitoring Kubernetes cluster deployments for the PKS platform. Using the vSphere PKS Plugin you c,an view details about your Kubernetes clusters, including master and worker nodes as well as networking configuration.
vROPs – CLI Open Source Project
Blue Medora, one of the authors of many vRealize Management Packs, has created an open source vROPsCLI.
You can find the project’s main page here on GitHub.
If you have been working to automate your life, then this is another step in the right direction.
VMware Test Drive
This is a really great way to get your hands on the software, and do a quick test, beyond what VMware Hands On Labs has for you.
VMware Test Drive has been in place for a while.
They have quite a few offerings for you to play with:
Workspace ONE
Workspace ONE UEM (Unified Endpoint Management)
Horizon
Horizon Cloud
App Volumes
UEM (User Environment Manager)
vSAN
They have some Sandbox Experiences available as well, so if you want to integrate the products into your own environment, you will have full admin access to the products:
Workspace ONE UEM (Unified Endpoint Management)
Identity Manager
AirWatch Express
And you can integrate with Office 365, Salesforce, & Dropbox too.
Need help getting access? Let me know.
VMware on AWS – Region Expansion
We were all waiting for more regions to become available, and by the end of the year, VMware on AWS will be in 3 more regions: California, Ohio, and Ireland.
Also promised (or at least stated) at VMworld this past week, is that by end of 2019, VMware on AWS will be available in all AWS Regions.
VMware on AWS – Horizon 7
While VMware Horizon has been supported on VMware on AWS, the ability for Instant/Linked Clones has not been. Now, Horizon 7 Instant Clones are supported. Given this is how most organizations get the ROI out of VDI solutions, running it on VMware on AWS becomes an option
VMware on AWS – with EBS backed Volumes
VMware on AWS has been getting a lot of attention.
Those that have already been using it, have expressed the desire to have better scalability, as well as availability/recoverability.
Enter – EBS backed volumes!
Not familiar with EBS? Here’s a good read.
EBS backed hosts will have the ability to scale from 15-35 TB per host
That means up to 140-TB in a 16 node cluster.
Now that the hard drives are not in the physical servers, replacing a failed node has a much shorter time to get back into service.