Visio – Gabbs' Random Thoughts

Virtual Updates 2020-11-30

VMware vExpert applications are open!!!
Already a vExpert? Looking to become one for the first time?
(if you are not confident and want some assistance, there ARE a group of vExperts with vExpert PRO willing to help you through the process.
All must go through the application process,
which is currently open until January 9, 2021.
vExpert Blog Post is here.

AWS re:Invent – Starts today for 3 weeks
AWS re:Invent is THIS week, online, and free.
Starting today, 2020-11-30, and running till 2020-12-18,
this event is now a 3-week long online event.
Pretty different schedule versus the one week in Vegas it has been.
Want to attend?
Register for AWS re:Invent here.

VMware Vulnerabilities – Critical
Affects ESXi, VM Workstation, & Fusion (so not vCenter?)
VMware Advisory Post 2020-0026 here.

Virtual Updates 2020-05-11

Best Post from VMware on vSphere 7 with Kubernetes
This comes right from Kit Kolbert, VMware’s VP & CTO of the Cloud Platform Business Unit.
There have been slightly varying messages heard by my clients, and this will be the default page I send them to.
This VMware Blog post explains how Kubernetes IS built into vSphere 7, but that to leverage its full capabilities, you need NSX, and how to get there today with VMware Cloud Foundation.

Azure VMware Solutions
Run VMware infrastructure in Azure?
Looks like its coming, as it is now in Preview….
Microsoft is flexing its muscles here with Windows & SQL Server licensing benefits (can’t fault them for that one).
My big concern here though….is support.
How is Microsoft Azure support going to compete with VMware support (not that VMware support has any advocates out there)?
Here is a Microsoft blog post on this.

VMware Official (not-official) Visio Stencils updated!
Why oh why has VMware NEVER released proper Visio stencils?
I’ve been questions VMware staff for years on this one.
Good thing the community has you covered.
Graham Barker has you covered.
His latest post has the updated VMware Visio stencils based on SDDC (which are used in VVD (VMware Validated Design) documents.

Virtual Updates 2020-02-17

VMware Licensing Change – Per CPU and Per Core
VMware is pushing out a change on how it licenses ESXi.
We are all familiar with the per CPU Socket model that has been in existence for some time (since the release of ESXi 1.x).
Well, now they are moving to per CPU with a max of 32-cores.
While that may not impact you right now, as CPU core counts go up, this will be something you have to deal with…maybe the next year or two.
What happens when you get a 36-core CPU? you will need 2 x CPU licenses to run ESXi on that.
Why don’t they just change their licensing to strictly be per core?
I don’t know…they didn’t ask me.
I truly believe if they want to start addressing cores, then just go straight core, and forget the CPU socket count. They already have figured out how much per core licensing would cost (~$118 or so, given the cost of ESXi Enterprise Plus per CPU socket licensing). Why not just do per core then?
With a mix of CPU socket and Core Count, I can see the nightmare coming….just like the vRAM Tax fiasco of the vSphere 5.0 release.
Remember that?
Having to do different designs for each solution to figure out the most cost effective way to deliver a mix of CPU and memory and determining how many hosts in each too.
I have no problem changing the licensing from CPU Socket to core, if that’s what you want to do.
I do have a problem with keep CPU Socket licensing, and limiting the number of cores to 32 per socket. Adding unnecessary design constraints to something in this manner will be a pain….again, not today, but next year & forward. If you run the new AMD chips (with 64-cores), you now have twice the expense to run ESXi on it…..
This happens on April 2, 2020.
Read the VMware News Post here.

Intel – another CPU vulnerability
Got another one to be aware of now.
Bob Plankers put out a post about these new vulnerabilities.
Nothing for us to do yet, as Intel hasn’t shipped a code-fix, but as long as you are patching your vSphere environment, you should be covered.

Virtual Updates 2019-05-27

VMware CPU Scheduling – 6.7 update 2 has choices…
With the release of vSphere 6.7 update 2, there are now choices with the way CPU scheduling occurs.
The reason for these choices is due to vulnerabilities that have been discovered and patched for CPU hardware (think L1TF and MDS).
There is now:
Default Scheduler (no inherent security awareness, but performs well)
Side-Channel Aware Scheduler v1 (SCAv1) (most secure, but slowest)
Side-Channel Aware Scheduler v2 (SCAv2)
This blog post by Bob Plankers on VMware’s site goes into the details….

VeeamOn
The infamous Veeam Backup & Replication v10 was announced (again).
Lots of great features announced, but I want to see it become generally available before getting excited.

Virtual Update 2019-05-13

VMware Visios of VVD with NSX-T
OK, so Visio’s might not be exciting….but take a look here.
So many good diagrams that you can use for NSX-T, SDDC, Networking configurations,……well worth the 10 minutes to download and check out the 3 drawings in this ZIP.

NUMA / vNUMA / Design & Considerations
Frank Denneman & Johan van Amersfoot host another ITQ lightboard.
This is awesome.
I have been sharing this same drawing with customers for years when discussing the sizing of VM workloads, CPU Ready %, constraints based on the hardware of the server you select (though with high CPU core counts today, this last bit is less of a constraint).
34 minutes long, and ABSOLUTELY worth watching!!!!

VeeamON is next week
I am unable to attend this event, so hoping to get feedback from my team to share here…..
Let me know if you see something at VeeamON that excites you!

VMware EMPOWER
The last of the VMware EMPOWER events is next week in Lisbon.
Perhaps there will be a final set of updates announced? We’ll have to wait and see….

Virtual Update 2019-04-29

VMware EMPOWER review
This was a great event.
Meeting my peers from around the world.
Validating that the company I work for, WEI, is focusing on the right things for our customers from the VMware point of view, as well as what my peers are doing.
The NDA insights received on many things, products and vision….
Working with the leadership at VMware during the event.
Working with the VMware Education team at the event.
I really wish that all customers could see what the partners do during this VMware EMPOWER event, and how much effort goes into it.
Yes, it is a “Partner-Only” version of VMworld, but what the partners get from this event benefits our customers so much. Our recommendations to our customers, our designs, implementations, and other choices we offer to customers is heavily influenced from these types of events.
Other than the networking with peers, the best benefit of this event for us partners, is that the REAL experts are right there for us to engage with.
I wish this was an event all partners could attend every 3 months……

Conferences Coming Up
This week is DellEMC World.
Next week is both Nutanix Next & RedHat Summit
Should be quite a bit of news from those events in the next two weeks….

Virtual Update 2019-01-21

VTUG Winter Warmer 2019
I am sure people are looking forward to this event!
Thursday, January 24 2019
Gillette Stadium, 1 Patriot Place, Foxboro, MA
Register Here!B

Operationalizing VMware vSAN – free book
Hopefully this is still available for you all when you read this (it was available for download still the morning I posted).
This 90 pager covers considerations for staff, process, and tools to own the vSAN solution.
Also linked on that page is NSX day 2 operations.
Get them while you can!

GitHub allows free Private Repos
As well as announcing GitHub Enterprise, which combines a few existing products.
I think the move to allow free Private Repos is move I would not have expected after Microsoft purchased GitHub, but it is appreciated (I can imagine many people don’t want their projects public by default).