Tanzu – Page 2 – Gabbs' Random Thoughts

Virtual Updates 2020-04-13

This week is a bit light.
I spent so much time these past 2 weeks reading the vSphere 7 documentation, rebuilding the classroom to run vSphere 7 (and doing all the patching of the Windows OS), and updating process documentation, that I missed keeping up on this post.

vSphere 7 – Released
OK, so there are a lot of things on this one note.
I’ll have a collection once you click “read more” on this post.
I’ll link the release notes here, but the collective of posts and informative notes will be linked as a collection below.
I’ve read through the 3500 pages of documentation already.
Lots of good information in there.
I have prepped a vSphere 7 What’s New that I plan on delivering to folks who would like to hear it.

Remote Access, VPN, VDI, or EUC
Lot of conversations about this these past few weeks.
I am doing a session on this today.
Thought I’d share some really good posts around that.
Brian Madden post on VMware’s Blog Site on VDI or VPN, what that means, and the considerations you should take, depending on your partners.
VMware has a Steps to Enable a Remote Workforce with Workspace ONE
This post gives the 10,000 foot view of the process of standing up Workspace ONE.

Virtual Updates 2020-03-30

VMware Wavefront – Covid-19 Dashboard
The power of VMware Wavefront put to good use in this time.
Check out the 3 x dashboards created in Wavefront monitoring Covid-19 stats.
Just remember, Wavefront can model just about anything you want.

vSphere 7 – vSphere Lifecycle Manager
Been waiting for this feature….
Imagine Update Manager not only applying patches, but also, firmware, drivers, BIOS, and other updates to your hosts?
Well, that’s vSphere Lifecycle Manager.
Desired state, compliance validation, auto-remediation (if you want it).
No more reading the Compatibly Guide (well, during updates and upgrades…still need to use that guide to select hardware.
This VMware Blog post highlights it, though it was written for vSAN….

Virtual Updates 2020-03-16

VMware GA Announcements…
There are so many good announcements, but they are broken up into quite a few sections.
If all you want is the news release summarizing everything….here you go.

Project Pacific – now becoming vSphere 7
Want to see the replay of the 3/10 announcements….
Here it is.
Frank Denneman did an amazing post this week on how Kubernetes workloads will be placed on a VMware Cluster, how DRS works with this, and how the workflow of the workload being deployed.
A great read.
A different post on The Medium goes into the technical overview.
Reading both of these articles will set you up for a much better understanding of what bringing Project Pacific to vSphere is about.
And remember…VMs can be defined too with Project Pacific…
I prefer this mind-map found on VMware’s site, which has all the new features laid out, and links to videos about those features.

VMware Tanzu
Tanzu was announced at VMworld as the Multi-Cloud Multi-Cluster Kubernetes management and deployment tool.
There is a couple of VMware HOL on this….
HOL-2032-01-CNA – VMware Tanzu Mission Control
HOL-2032-91-CNA – VMware Tanzu Mission Control Simulation
Recommend you give it a go…2 hours well invested.
A few videos I cam across that cover some of its uses….
IAM (Identity & Access Management) Control with Tanzu Mission Control
Container Registry Management with Tanzu Mission Control
Integrating AWS accounts with Tanzu Mission Control
You can see where Tanzu is going…..

Virtual Updates 2019-12-09

HPE SAS SSD Drive Failure Imminent!
This sounds bad.
Taken right from the linked document….
Bulletin: HPE SAS Solid State Drives – Critical Firmware Upgrade Required for Certain HPE SAS Solid State Drive Models to Prevent Drive Failure at 32,768 Hours

VMware Project Pacific
I keep posting on this, but I’m just trying to stay on top of it…
Cormac Hogan did a great writeup that takes 5-10 minutes to read & comprehend the solution.
Of course, William Lam tweeted about a few VMworld sessions (2 of which were new to me) that are worth watching. You will need a VMworld account to get access to these.
HBI1452BE – Supervisor Cluster
HBI4500BE – Guest Cluster
HBI4501BE – Native Pods

Virtual Updates 2019-11-25

vSphere & Intel JCC, TAA, and MCEPSC/IFU: What You Need to Know
This post is all about CPU vulnerabilities & remediation in vSphere.
This doesn’t tell you what to do, but rather provides options for what you can do. Here this from customers often enough, that these posts are worth referring back to.

VMware Project Pacific – Beta open
Can’t wait for the release?
Get in on this beta.
The announcement of the beta program states it is limited access.
It provides a link to request access.

Virtual Updates 2019-11-11

Conferences…..
VMworld 2019 Europe has wrapped up this past week.
So has MS Ignite 2019.
Lots of good announcements, some of the ones I found most exciting are below…..
AWS re:Invent 2019 is coming up in a few weeks!
A Veeam online event is next week….

VMworld -Security, Project Pacific & Project Tanzu
Was able to find some pretty good summaries of these from VMworld.
(sorry that they are embedded in Twitter, but these are all short & sweet)
Tanzu Mission Control in 82 seconds
Project Pacific in 97 seconds
NSX Intelligence in 72 seconds
NSX + AppDefense + Carbon Black in 102 seconds
Workspace ONE + Carbon Black in 132 seconds
…and of course, William Lam has already posted his VMworld 2019 EU direct playback & download URLs for all VMworld sessions

vCenter / Skyline – Upgrade Checker & Validation
Skyline had a VMware Blog post on this.
VMworld Europe sessions highlighted this within vCenter.
Software Interoperability checks to be performed in vCenter /Skyline.
Upgrades processes (when you have multiple products) & sequence provided.
To me, this means less time spent int he VMware Interoperability Matrix, and less risk in performing updates / upgrades.
Can’t wait to see that feature become reality.
Even still…..we’ll have to upgrade the old way to get to a point where these checks and validations are done for us….THEN the NEXT upgrade will be easier.

vROPs – Expiring Certificates
Saw this in my inbox this week. First I’ve heard about it….
Replace expired internal certificate in vROPs 6.3 & later
Sounds like anyone who’s deployed vROPs should check this out….
Apparently, the certificates expire on 11/19/19?
Simple check and fix in the linked VMware KB article.
This could be for things deployed as late as 8.0 (possibly)?

Virtual Updates 2019-09-02

VMworld 2019 US
This was a great event….the most energy of many recent VMworld.
So many announcements (below) drove this.
Project Pacific, Tanzu, Kubernetes (everywhere), & security were huge.
I am so happy to have attended my 13th VMworld, and shared that experience with the WEI team, our customers, and my peers from around the world….
You’ll be hearing the: Build, Run, Manage, Connect, Protect
mantra over and over this year…..
Day 1 Recap (VMware Blog Post)
Day 2 Recap (VMware Blog Post)
Day 3 Recap (VMware Blog Post)
Day 4 Recap (VMware Blog Post)
Chris Wolf’s (VP & CTO) take on VMworld.

Tech Field Day was presenting at VMworld, and they too have uploaded a lot of their presentations.
Intro to Pacific, how Pacific was created, Pacific Architecture, Bitfusion & ML/AI, Bitfusion demo, Bitfusion & vSphere.

An amazing job, in that all the presentations are up and available for viewing. Kudos to the VMworld staff for that.
More importantly, William Lam has made it easy to find them all.
Or you can use VMware’s VMworld On-Demand Video Library to find them.

For those of us in New England, I’ll see you at the Boston VMUG 9/25.
There are 11 events scheduled right now, maybe in your town.

VMware Project Pacific
This is all about ESXi getting an architecture update for native Kubernetes support (and being able to manage via vCenter).
Kubernetes adds Harbor Registry to vSphere.
Kubernetes at an 8% speed increase over bare metal.
Looks like full SDDC support too (vSphere, vSAN, NSX) for K8s namespaces.
VMware Blog post here (which also has great links about it).
Frank Denneman chimes in here.
Cormac Hogan chimes in here.

VMware Tanzu
Above and beyond Project Pacific, Tanzu is another major announcement this year from VMworld.
Tanzu Mission Control is for managing ALL your Kubernetes (whatever cloud they happen to be running on).
VMware Blog post here.
Another VMware Blog post here.
A 1.5 minute YouTube video of Ray’s take on Tanzu and what it does.