Finding TCP/IP Ports used in VMware
Not sure where I ran across thisIts a simple and effective site
VMware VMX-14 default change
Apparently, I might have been building template VMs incorrectly in vSphere 6.7, depending on use case….So I changed my process to configure a new Template VM from a BIOS to EFI setting for its Boot Options —> Firmware.This Firmware setting is the new default when building a VMX-14 based VMI did this for my Windows 2016 servers to be able to use VBS (Virtualization Based Security).Turns out, certain cloud providers can’t handle EFI…which means those VMs might not be capable of being moved to a public cloud….
Is this a problem with VMware or the Public Cloud providers (that have this issue)? In my case, I’ll stay with the VMX-14 defaults as I build my template VMs for on-premises use.
VMware Cloud Foundation 3.0 released
Bring your own network switches….finally!
Now you can use whatever network switches you would like with VMware Cloud Foundation.
Another cool thing is that you can create Multi-Cluster Workload Domains. Lots of reasons you would choose a new Workload Domain, and other reasons you would have multiple clusters in a workload domain.
It just depends on the requirements.
VMware vRealize Suite 2018 released
In preparation for vSphere 6.7 Update 1, the vRealize Suite has been updated.I like how they are branding the VMware Cloud Management Platform term around this product, as it really is a management platform.
vRealize Suite Standard will help with self-driving operations
vRealize Suite Advanced will help with programmable provisioning (self-service ITaaS) and lifecycle management
vRealize Suite Enterprise will help with application operations
This is made of of quite a few products….while vRA is awesome, I think everyone will like the new vROPs release.
vRealize Operations 7.0 (take a tour of the new version) Read more about What’s New here
vRealize Log Insight 4.7
vRealize Business 7.5
vRealize Automation 7.5 (A good overview of it here). Super short summary here by Magnus Andersson
vRealize Orchestrator – embedded Postgres DB is clusterable & supports failover! No upgrade option, just migrate options.
vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 2.0 (can’t wait to spend some time here, and simplify deployment & upgrades)
vRealize Operations Advanced now has the private cloud piece of vRealize Business.
VMware Workspace ONE UEM 9.7 released
Not to be confused with UEM (User Environment Manager), this is Workspace ONE UEM (Unified Endpoint Management)
Lots of the updates focus on iOS 12 being released.
Dell has added factory services for Windows 10.Additional Windows 10 enhancements have been made.
Given that Workspace ONE fits in with WEI’s UEC (End User Computing) solutions, never hurts to be up to date.
You can watch the short 6:30 video about the features here.
VMware NST-T Datacenter 2.3 released
Released just this past week, some new features.
You can read the full release notes here, but below are a few snippets….
Bare Metal support for Linux
Support for AWS deployments of NSX Cloud
Automatic NSX Agent provisioning in Azure VNETs
VPN between on-prem & public clouds
Service insertion in the routing tiers
DFW enhancements have quite a few
Default HA mode for Tier-1 Logical routers moves from Preemptive to Non-Preemptive….not going to list them all.
VMware Workstation 15 released
So, not super exciting in the Hybrid Cloud or datacenter, but a lot of us still use Workstation & Fusion on our laptops…
A short summary of some new features might be worth 2 minutes of your time.
VMware vROPs – changing the collection interval
With vROPs, you are collecting data every five minutes, by default.
If you want to increase (or decrease) this interval, just remember, it effects the size of your vROPs data (up or down).
I’ve had this exact question, and Matt Bradford wrote a nice summaryof these simple to change settings.In short, its in the Inventory Explorer….
Values can be changed from 1-1,440 minutes.
VMware vROPs – creating custom dashboards
Creating custom dashboards is one of the cool things about vROPs.
Found a few good walkthroughs on how to create a few dashboards in vROPs 6.7 and 7.0
VMs with Guest Needed Memory not collecting Dashboard
Cost by Application Dashboard
Snapshot Detail Dashboard
I am sure there are quite a few more at this site that are useful, just through a few up as examples.
VMware vSAN VMworld Sessions with Customers
Duncan Epping got a nice collection (and links to) of VMworld 2018 sessions with vSAN Customers.
His post is here, and he highlights some of his favorite points in the presentations.
This could be a 5 minute read, or many hours if you watch all the presentations.
The customers participating range from GM, US Senates, Honeywell, Norwegian Cruise, etc.
VMware vMotion across different vDS
Another great post by William Lam
If you have ever vMotioned a VM between vCenters and the vDS is running at different versions, your vMotion would fail.
He has uncovered some tweaks that can be made on vCenter Advanced Settings that would allow you to bypass this….
He found this while digging into VMC on AWS release notes, and found a way to make it work with your on-prem infrastructure too.
Its a short read, and never hurst to know.
AWS RDS on VMware VMware
So in 2017, when VMware announced VMware on AWS, that was pretty intriguing.
Now in 2018, we are hearing about the reverse…. Running AWS RDS on VMware.
Initial support for MS SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MYSQL, and MariaDB.
This will make it easy for VMware customers to consume AWS RDS in their VMware SDDC.
You can then realize the benefit AWS RDS Brings: provisioning, patching, backup, cloning, scaling, replication, etc.
Reading into it a bit more, you can see how you could then move the workloads to VMware on AWS, AWS itself, or another SDDC in your organization…..and I can’t imagine they will stop at just the RDS offering either….
I’m looking forward to hearing more about these AWS on VMware announcements as they appear.
Microsoft Azure Learning / HOL / Citadel
Microsoft Learnmay have been out for a while, but I just came across it.
It might be basic, but it is free.
Microsoft HOL(Hands on Labs) is another good find. A lot of free offerings
Azure Citadelis another offering for workshops, demos, labs. So I have not yet spent a lot of time in these sites, but they look promising. I’ll share an opinion when I try them out.
VMware – a 10 minute history covering 20 years
Matt Bradfordput this out just a day ago, and when I watched his video, it was a great flashback.