MarkGabbs – Page 20 – Gabbs' Random Thoughts

Virtual Update 2019-02-18

VMware repeals 2 year recertification requirement
Finally….something I have fought VMware Education against since I heard they were going to implement this.
In short, you take an exam and get certified.
You MUST take another exam within 2 years, or you lose your certification.
Regardless of why they thought this was required, it is now no longer true.
Now, you certs are valid without requiring retesting after the 2 year mark.
Granted, if you are certified as a VCP5, when VCP7 is available, VCP5 doesn’t really hold much value
Read the announcement here.

VMware vSphere 6.0 – End of General Support
It is coming…March 12, 2000.
Feels like we JUST got folks off of 5.5 (which is good, because they are mostly 6.5 or greater now).
If you think that’s OK, End of General Support for:
vSphere 6.5 – November 15, 2021.
vSphere 6.7 – November 15, 2021. (yes, same as vSphere 6.5)
Two-and-one-half years goes by quick…..so don’t blink!
VMware KB 66977.

VMware Workspace ONE – from some of the best
If you are in the EUC (End User Computing) space, you must have heard the names of Johan van Amersfoot & Brian Madden at some point.
This is a great video that covers what the Workspace ONE solution does, and how it enables the EUC vision from VMware.
This is 1-hour 10-minutes. watch all of it…..
Absolutely worth watching if you are VDI or EUC, EMM, MDM, or have a security focus.

Virtual Update 2019-02-04

VMware VCP 2019 Exams Are Released
Karl Childs, our favorite Senior Manager in VMware Education , has release this note last week regarding the availability of the new VCP-2019 exams.
Short post, but it links to each of the VCP 2019 certs available, and their details.

VMware CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program)
This was mentioned a few months ago, and it deserves a rehash.
In the past, WEI had kept a neutral stance on this setting (enabled or disabled).
Now, WEI has a recommended stance on enabling this settings.
Why?
They way VMware Support uses CEIP.
How to change the setting via PoweCLI? of course William Lam has the answer in a recent post.

VMware Dynamic Health Check (vSphere 6.7+)
This week’s aggregation seems to have too many links to William Lam’s VirtuallyGhetto, but he is a great source of information….
Select your vCenter object on the left pane, go to Monitor, Health.
That’s it. Read about it here.
You must have CEIP enabled (see above) for this to work.

Virtual Update 2019-01-21

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!B

Operationalizing VMware vSAN – free book
Hopefully this is still available for you all when you read this (it was available for download still the morning I posted).
This 90 pager covers considerations for staff, process, and tools to own the vSAN solution.
Also linked on that page is NSX day 2 operations.
Get them while you can!

GitHub allows free Private Repos
As well as announcing GitHub Enterprise, which combines a few existing products.
I think the move to allow free Private Repos is move I would not have expected after Microsoft purchased GitHub, but it is appreciated (I can imagine many people don’t want their projects public by default).

Virtual Updates 2019-01-07

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!B

VMware Certifications VCP-2019
VMware had announced last year that they were attempting to have VCP exams (as well as VCAP exams) released on a more predictive schedule.
Karl Childs announced that the new exams are starting to be released.
His post, and release dates are linked here.

Virtual Update 2018-12-24

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!B

VMware vSAN Cluster Design – Large vs. Small Clusters
The team at WEI doesn’t just have this conversation around vSAN, but with all of the vSphere clusters that we build.
This VMware Docs page is dedicated to providing the options around sizing decisions for a vSAN cluster, discussing performance, scale, fault domains, and why there is no one right answer for everyone.

AWS reInvent
Finding it hard to find the specific reInvent session for replay?
Found someone who made it easy to search through the entirety.
Its a bit of an overwhelming list, but using Control+F is much easier this way.

Virtual Update 2018-12-10

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!

Boston VMUG
A meeting in December! Cool (hahahaha).
OK, so get registered here.
Dec 13, 2018 from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM, and is the final 2018 event for the Boston VMUG.

AWS reInvent & Nutanix .NEXT London
Both conferences were kicked off two weeks ago.
I was expecting cool things in both, but some of the Nutanix announcements really got me excited. More on that below….

Virtual Update 2018-11-26

…and with AWS reInvent going on this week, I’ll be looking forward to some interesting announcements and updates…..

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!

Boston VMUG
A meeting in December! Cool (hahahaha).
OK, so get registered here.
Dec 13, 2018 from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM, and is the final 2018 event for the Boston VMUG.

vSphere 6.7 Update 1
I have been playing with this release for over a month now, and it has treated me pretty well (minus the fact that during the first month, my Veeam based backups didn’t work without a modification to the registry).
I’ve been playing with VMware View, vSAN, vROPs, SRM, and some additional 3rd party products, all with great success.
The HTML5 is fully featured, and I have yet to find anything to complain about in its functionality.