VMware Cloud Universal – introdction
VMware now has this thing call “VMware Cloud Universal” (…VCU?).
Essentially, buying VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation) and having the ability to deploy the software in any cloud….
I can see this being an enabler for those who want to run vSphere with Tanzu, but I’m pretty sure that can be done in the cloud pretty easily as the main components are already there….
I’m interested to see how this plays out…..
VMware Blog post is here.

Northeast Regional VMUG Virtual UserCon
“In just one day, you can virtually explore the newest VMware content and get connected with hundreds of IT professionals in the Northeast region.”
Looks like a full day of content!
Check it out and learn a bit more about what used to be called VDI, and in now referred to as EUC (End User Computing). 

VMware has quite a few new releases
I go into them below….
DO NO UPGRADE JUST YET>>>>>

The Cloud is Just Someone Else’s Computer / Datacenter
March 9th, OVH (a cloud provider), had a fire in one of its Datacenter locations, affecting a few of the AZs (Availability Zones) in that region.
their message to their users was quick….
“….time to activate your business continuity / Disaster Recover Plans….”
I’ve just heard too many stories of people moving to cloud, and not building in a BC/DR plan as part of that, thinking that the cloud is always on.
This just gets back to good architecture of you environment, expecting things to fail, and making sure the design accounts and deals with those situations.
I found the story here, but by the time you read this, I’m sure many more updates will exist.
Here is the Twitter Thread, from OVH.
….add to that an Azure outage in mid-March….too bad there is no way I am aware of to have an on-prem version of Office 365 running in case Azure goes offline….

VCDX – newest & those who upgrade to current VCDX
Welcome some of the newest VCDX!
Also, take a peek at how many VCDX upgraded their cert to current versions.
While I have VCDX in vSphere 3, 4, 5, 6, and now 2020, that’s a lot of updates.
If there are ~300 VCDX, and only 16 per year update it, I wonder how many have all there versions that I do (upgrading every version)…. 12 years into the program.
Check out the VMware Blog post here.

VMware Tools 11.2.5 released
Remember…VMware Tools is really only required for Windows (as modern Linux distributions…they have open-vm-tools), and is released OUTSIDE the ESXi server releases.
Depending on your version of vCenter, you may have to download manually, and import to Update Manager (now called LifeCycle Manager).
Download link is here.
Release Note are here.

VCP’s and VCAP’s around the World
World
VMware Blog Post about it (super short).
VMware PDF for VCP
VMware PDF for VCAP

VCDX’s around the World
While VMware published the above VCP & VCAP breakdown, Michael Voigt published a breakdown of VCDX’s worldwide.
1/3 work for VMware
1/3 work for other OEMs (Cisco, AWS, Google, Nutanix, etc).
That only leave 1/3 working at VARs/Resellers where customers can get those designs from certified experts that focus on business requirements & outcomes.
Check out his post / breakdown of VCDX here.
…. only 0.08% of VMware certified individuals are VCDX…..