Technology – Gabbs' Random Thoughts

Virtual Updates 2024-12-16

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)

Virtual Updates 2024-11-25

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.

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….

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)

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.

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.

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.