VMConAWS – Gabbs' Random Thoughts

Virtual Updates 2020-11-16

vCenter STS Certificate Expires!!!
Please….take a minute to check on this, as it could cause issues….like the vCenter Server SSO components not working due to certificate expiration.
This VM Community post covers the topic.
Check your certificates, and renew then before they expire.
VMware KB article on how to fix on vSphere 6.5 & 6.7, if running on Windows.
VMware KB article on how to fix on vSphere 6.5, 6.7, & 7.0, if using VCSA.

VMware Modern Networks
Short notice, as this event is today!
My apologies….got this note this weekend before the post…..
Get signed up for this, and take 45 minutes to (hopefully) hear all about
Declarative, Event-Driven, self-service networks.

VMware Tools is now a Separate Product
What?
Yes, you must download VMware Tools separately now.
Still validating that it shows up in vSphere 7.x LCM (or what used to be called Update Manager) without additional steps, and it still appears to.
Just add this to your list of things to complain about when speaking with VMware going forward……
VMware Blog post is here.

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 2020-01-20

vSphere 6.0 – End of Support March 2020
We all have heard that support is ending….
March is only 2 months away!
This VMware Blog Post will be linked here for the next 2 months….
Here’s a direct link to VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix for products.
Let’s not forget that vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 have end of support for 2021/11/15

Microsoft LDAP Changes
This is an important one!
For all of us who grant vCenter permissions with AD over LDAP…
A change is coming in Microsoft software in March 2020.
This affects lots of software, not just VMware…
If you are using ldap://domain.com:389 in vSphere (or other), please read.
The VMware Blog post highlighting this is here.

CVS 10-year anniversary with WEI
Awesome news. (I’m biased a bit, as I work at WEI.
CVS has recently posted this to their website.
Its a short glimpse into their diversity program, and the have a video made that highlights WEI (a nice 4-minute video), our teams, and what makes WEI special.

Virtual Updates 2019-09-30

VMware Tools 11.0 is out!
So VMware Tools has been released separately from ESXi hosts for a while now. Still, a lot of people miss out on this information.
Well, Tools 11.0 is out, & I’m getting ready to run it in the lab this first weekend.
You can find the download here.
Release Notes are here.
Grab the offline VIB add it to Update Manager, and use Update Manager to distribute to your ESXi hosts (so VMs can be updated).

VMware vROPs – The community Reference Guide
Came across this great collection for vROPs on GitHub.
Kudos to the community putting this together.
VMworld sessions, documentation, books, training, HOLs sessions, Twitter Handles……

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….