Gabbs' Random Thoughts

Manuals Online
Cool. Found manualslib.com squirrel away as a favorite, and figured I’d share.
A collection of PDF manuals for so many things….
Everything from Singer sewing machines to Bose headphones.

VMware PULLS ESXi 7.0 u3 & u3a
With Update 3 being a month old, and update 3a being 2 weeks old….
BOTH HAVE BEEN PULLED FROM THE VMWARE WEBSITE!!!!
There were multiple issues with both releases.
I just taught a 3 day workshop based on Update 3a, and had nothing but issues…(all minor, but I could not successfully, patch, got a couple PSODs, and had minor operations GUI based issues)
IF YOU HAVE GOTTEN UP TO THIS RELEASE …> PATCH NOW!!!!!
VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 3b Release Notes are here.
VMware vCenter 7.0 Update 3b Release Notes are here.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2021-11-15”

VMC (VMware Cloud on AWS) – now 15% off
A nice promotion. 15% off on-demand, 1 & 3 year subscriptions.
Driving down the price of public cloud!
Check out the post, and talk to your WEI Account Exec

ESXi 7.0 Update 3 – PSDO
When running UNMAP requests on thin provisioned disks.
I’ve already run into it, and spent my time looking at hardware (as it was a net new deploy)….
VMware Blog post is here.
Good thing Update 3a is out to resolve!

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2021-11-01”

VMware Tanzu Community Edition
This created a lot of excitement for folks when released.
Caught me by surprise.
Essentially, you get Tanzu for vSphere, AWS, Azure, or locally on your machine.
Quickly and easily.
VMware Blog post is here.
William Lam’s post is here. (shows easy installation using Brew/Chocolatey)
William Lam’s post on Minimum vSphere Versions is here.
Main Tanzu Community Edition page.
VMware HOL for Tanzu (just note which ones are community edition)

VMware Skyline PRO
…still part of your S&S, this “free” utility helps you get a handle on your VMware solutions you have deployed.
Already have Skyline? You’ll be upgraded to pro next time you upgrade.
Found a blog post about it here.

Be Careful with Windows Updates on Server 2012 R2
Had a customer get bit by this.
Apparently, in win2012r2, if you apply the VMware SCSI you might get a non-accessible boot device. The reddit thread linked below covers it.
No longer on Windows Update, you still may have a VM that gets it, or has gotten it.
Read the post, and the linked VMware KBs….
I did not have a problem with this in win2016, win2019, or win2022.
Details here, on reddit.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2021-10-18”

VMworld 2021 – Oct 5-7
Remember, this is another Virtual Event….and it starts tomorrow!
Get registered for free at: VMworld

vCenter 6.5, 6.7, and 7.x – Critical Patch
vCenter has just been patched to handle a critical vulnerability.
VMware Advisory VMSA-2021-0020 is here
On vCenter 7, it does take a bit for the patch to be applied, and the vCenter services to be restarted.
vCenter 6.5 u3q Release Notes are here
vCenter 6.7 u3o Release Notes are here
vCenter 7.0 u2d Release Notes are here

TinkerTry – Credit Freeze & Identity Protection
…and stopping unsolicited junk mail.
Paul Braren, who runs TinkerTry, came up with a great summary of these 3 major topics.
Give it a read.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2021-10-04”

ESXi boot volumes – SD/USB is being deprecated.
With ESXi 7 reworking the boot partition and usage of that capacity, there have been some SD card failures (for those of us booting from SD).
The issue is highlighted in VMware KB 83376.
Followed up by VMware KB 85685, states explicitly that this support will be dropped in the next version of vSphere.
If you plan to have your hardware run the next version of vSphere (whenever that gets released), you will need to be off those boot devices….
Duncan Epping weighing in here.

ESXi boot volumes – migrate from SD to m2
So people are already doing this and validating the process.
VMware has posted the process online, though I couldn’t find it.
Derek Seaman has gone through this, and captured the process in his post.
Given the effort it would take, I’m a bigger fan of remove SD card, install appropriate new boot media, install ESXi, use Update (Lifecycle) Manager and vDS and Host Profiles to configure.

VMUG Boston Event!
Get registered here, at the VMUG site (be sure to login).

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2021-09-20”

ESXi using SD/USB for Boot Volume
In vSphere 7.0, there have been some issues with SD/USB boot drives getting corrupted. Read from certain blogs, that the latest update 2c would resolve this.
Now, hearing that this is deprecated in future releases….
Differing opinions on whether this is good or bad.
Opinions do not matter though, as this VMware KB 85615 states:
(post has been removed)
Another peer, Christian Mohn had a post about this as well.
Well, I guess I’ll keep with the recommendations I’ve been making since 7.0 was released….transition your boot drives to SSD or NVMe is you need your ESXi hosts to run 7.x, or leave them at 6.7 till hardware refresh is possible.

VMworld 2022 – announced
VMworld has been virtual in 2020 and 2021 (for obvious reasons).
On the current main page of VMworld, under the General section….
It shows the dates for VMworld 2022 US in San Francisco.
It shows the dates for VMworld 2022 Europe Fira Gran Via in Barcelona, Spain.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2021-09-06”

It’s been a bit quite this past week…
With lots of my focus on Nutanix & VMware, and their annual conferences coming up soon….news is s little bit light…
End of September and mid-October posts will be right after the conferences, so I expect that at that time, lots of interesting things to chat about…

vCenter 7.x – Integrating Identity Provider for MFA
Security has taken a more prominent place in our day to day.
Especially when running/managing an infrastructure.
Since vSphere 7.x has a few options (only a few) for MFA, WEI has been helping quite a few of our customers move towards this extra layer of AAA (Authentication, authorization, access) into vSphere environments.
Take a look at the options, and realize it is NOT as hard as it could be to do this.
Understanding 2-Factor Authentication from VMware vSphere Docs.
vCenter Server Identity Provider docs from VMware vSphere Docs.
vSphere Authentication Guide from Aug 2020
Blog post by Vladan Segeton 4sysops.com on the overall process of adding ADFS with to your vCenter Identity Provider.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2021-08-23”