Virtual News – Page 22 – Gabbs' Random Thoughts

Virtual Update 2018-10-15

VMware Hands On Labs Updated
Looks like a lot of the labs that were available at VMworld have made it to the HOL offered up all year.
vSphere 6.7, Wavefront, vSAN 6.7, VMware Pivotal Container Service & Kubernetes, Machine Learning, NFV, etc

VMware CloudHealth acquisition completed
This past week, VMware finalized the acquisition of CloudHealth, a Boston based firm.
CloudHealth is a Cloud Management Platform (CMP)They focus on automating cloud governance, consumption and costs.
Sounds like it has a direct overlap with some of the vRealize Suite (vRA, vRB, and vROPs).
Might this be a new CMP for us to learn?

vSphere With Operations Management – END OF AVAILABILITY
So VMware announced on 10/8/18 that vSOM is no longer available to customers on February 1, 2019. What happens to customers who HAVE been licensed for vSOM?
After 10/15/18, existing vSOM Enterprise Plus licenses will be split into VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus, and vROPs Standard.
This will result in higher Support & Services cost at the next renewal.

AFTER 2/1/2019, your only two options to acquire vROPs are purchasing vROPs standalone, or in the vRealize/vCloud Suite. Good news,….they are offering discounts on the upgrades.
vSphere Platinum Promotion
vROPs Promotion

ONLY for vSOM customers (as far as I know), vSphere Enterprise Plus can be upgraded to vSphere Platinum.
Platinum includes VMware AppDefense (security policy to secure applications, infrastructure, data & access). This is being offered at 50% off, and comes with $10,000 credits to use on VMware on AWS (if you are upgrading 5 or more licenses), which is enough to run 4 nodes for a few weeks.

ONLY for vSOM customers, vROPs can be upgraded to either vROPs Advanced or vRealize Suite at a 50% discount.

The third option is if you wish to upgrade vSphere Enterprise Plus AND vROPs (as described above), you would receive 50% off for vSphere Platinum and 65% off the vROPs upgrade of your choice.

Many of our customers have vSphere Enterprise Plus with Operations Management (vSOM), so WEI will be busy making sure that this conversation is had with all customers who do have this choice to make.

Virtual Update 2018-10-01

Finding TCP/IP Ports used in VMware
Not sure where I ran across thisIts a simple and effective site

VMware VMX-14 default change
Apparently, I might have been building template VMs incorrectly in vSphere 6.7, depending on use case….So I changed my process to configure a new Template VM from a BIOS to EFI setting for its Boot Options —> Firmware.This Firmware setting is the new default when building a VMX-14 based VMI did this for my Windows 2016 servers to be able to use VBS (Virtualization Based Security).Turns out, certain cloud providers can’t handle EFI…which means those VMs might not be capable of being moved to a public cloud….

Is this a problem with VMware or the Public Cloud providers (that have this issue)? In my case, I’ll stay with the VMX-14 defaults as I build my template VMs for on-premises use.

Virtual Update 2018-09-17

VMware Tools Recall & Resolution
VMware Tools 10.3.0 recalled, as it can PSOD your ESXi hosts.
Someone didn’t test this out …. At all….
This has to do with VMXNET3 drivers, which should be used for all your VMware VMs Updated on 9/12/18 is VMware Tools 10.3.2

VMware Boston VMUG UserCon
This is October 17 in Boston from 8-5Lots of great sessions.
Let your friends know.
Hands-on training, NSX introduction.
See full agenda here

Virtual Update 2018-09-03

After VMworld, this is a bit longer than normally expected, but hey….after VMworld, it SHOULD be a bit longer than normal….

Virtual Update 2018-08-20

VMworld 2018
Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, August 26-29Its coming quickly. If you know of anyone going, PLEASE…let me know. Want to make sure that we include our customers in anything WEI does in Las Vegas.

VMware vSphere 5.5 End of General Support
September 19, 2018 is coming, and many of our customers are engaged in projects getting their infrastructures up to date.It was a good five (5) year run on this version of vSphere, but all good things must come to an end.VMware has been repeatedly stating this over the past 7 months, and here is another reference back to a February post, with links and FAQs around the topic.

Virtual Update 2018-07-30

VMworld 2018
Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, August 26-29
Its coming quickly. If you are going, PLEASE…let me know. Want to make sure that we include ALL our customers in anything WEI does in Las Vegas.

Continue reading “Virtual Update 2018-07-30”

Virtual Update 2018-07-16

Something kept coming up when I’ve been chatting with customers lately. They have found out that I am snipping and keeping updates (from multiple sources), and sharing these every couple of weeks with the WEI team….and have been asked to post these notes here.

This is the first post, and I went back about two months.

This post will be a bit longer than most, and hopefully you’ll find it useful.

I will attempt to post this every two weeks, so as not to keep your inboxes too busy….

Thanks for reading!

Continue reading “Virtual Update 2018-07-16”