VMware VCP 2019 Exams Are Released
Karl Childs, our favorite Senior Manager in VMware Education , has release this note last week regarding the availability of the new VCP-2019 exams.
Short post, but it links to each of the VCP 2019 certs available, and their details.
VMware CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program)
This was mentioned a few months ago, and it deserves a rehash.
In the past, WEI had kept a neutral stance on this setting (enabled or disabled).
Now, WEI has a recommended stance on enabling this settings.
Why?
They way VMware Support uses CEIP.
How to change the setting via PoweCLI? of course William Lam has the answer in a recent post.
VMware Dynamic Health Check (vSphere 6.7+)
This week’s aggregation seems to have too many links to William Lam’s VirtuallyGhetto, but he is a great source of information….
Select your vCenter object on the left pane, go to Monitor, Health.
That’s it. Read about it here.
You must have CEIP enabled (see above) for this to work.
VCAP6-NV Exam Prep Workshop for Free?
This caught my attention.
Was reading a post about the VCAP6-NV exam, and saw a note about the online Exam Prep Workshop.
Apparently, the VCAP6-NV Exam Prep Workshop is offered for free? Looks that way. In order for the above link to work, you must already be logged in to VMware Certification.
VMware vSphere Integrated Containers 1.5 released
Do you use vIC?
If so, the latest release is out, supporting vSphere 6.7, 6.5, and 6.0.
With NSX-T integrations, Photon OS 2.0 under the covers, and the ability to use other Linux Kernels, it might be worth taking a look at again…
Here’s one announcement covering some details.
VMware Lightning Labs
VMware has release a series of Lightning Labs in their Hands on Labs.
What is a Lightning Lab?
These are short, 30 minute, labs around a specific topic.
vSphere & vSAN 6.7, NSX, Horizon, Workspace ONE, & VMware on AWS are the first Lightning Labs making a showing.
Maybe these are more focused than regular HOL…we’ll have to see.
VMware PowerCLI Cookbook for vSAN
Found this in the VMware StorageHub site.
Follow the link, and search for PowerCLI Cookbook, and you’ll find an eighty page PDF, with many initial configuration, and some day 2 operations explained, with examples, and screenshots to help configure Clusters, and vSAN settings (like Storage Policies).
VxRail 4.7.100 Released
Why is this a big deal?
It is the first release that includes the vCenter Plug-in for VxRail Manager.
This will be installed and configured once you upgrade to this release, so you will see the functionality in vCenter after the upgrade.
Jeremy Merrill has a post about this on his site detailing what you see, and how this is now the only way to manage your VxRail.
VMware on AWS – vSAN scaling to PBs
So the initial release of VMware on AWS had some hard limits on the amount of storage each node would contribute to the overall capacity of the vSAN datastore.
Since VMworld 2018, we have been looking forward to how vSAN can be scaled in VMware on AWS to address higher capacity requirements.
This blog post from VMware gives a great overview, that can be read in 3-5 minutes, and give an understanding of how this new scaling works.
VMware Cloud on AWS Migration Deep Dive
As stated, this is a deep dive, so plan on 1 hour to review this YouTube video created by the VMware Cloud team.
Brian Graff is part of the video, so you can expect a lot from this.
VVD for SDDC 5.0
awesome. VVD (VMware Validated Design) has been updated to 5.0.
There was also a post for the VVD 5.0 Design Decision Checklist.
This checklist has 376 design decisions all called out for the VVD 50. Design.
VMware NSX-T – The Central CLI
Using NSX-T yet? If so, this post from Romain Decker should help.
The point of this post is to cover this functionality of running the CLI from the NSX Manager, especially since documentation only barely mentions this feature/function.
VMware Cloud Builder
Something I have never heard of, but given that it is now a 1.0 release, that would make sense.
So what is it?
It is an OVA you deploy, that will automate the deployment of a VVD (VMware Validated Design).
So? Big deal….it handles deployments for ESXi, vCenter, NSX-V, vRLCM, vROPs (& it’s management packs), vRLI, vRA, vRB, SRM, and vSphere Replication……..OK, I get it now…..
Here is a post on the VMware site announcing it, and its current limitations.
Still,……shouldn’t all this be part of vRLCM (vRealize Lifecycle Manager)?
My opinion…yes.
VMware Usage Insight
Never heard of this? No worries, neither have I.
Looks like it is really for Cloud Service Providers, and perhaps even those who use the services from VMware Cloud offerings (including VMware on AWS).
Take the 2 minutes to read up on it, and just be aware of this, as it can probably help anyone who is using any of the VMware Cloud offerings.
VMware PhotonOS has rPI3 Version
Not something I knew about.
William Lam goes into some use cases on his recent post, but I see it as the start of ESXi on ARM for those of us not in project Dimension.
Nutanix Calm 2.6 Released
This was released near the end of January.
While there are bug fixes and features added, something caught my eye: Nutanix Playground. This lets you test your blueprints without actually deploying them. Sounds like a time saver!
Here are the release notes (though you must login to access them).
Veeam 9.5 Update 4
Awesome release, and most of us will focus on vSphere 6.7 Update 1 support.
But don’t take this lightly…..
You will HAVE to update your Veeam licenses (you will have 90 days to deal with licenses if you are upgrading your Veeam Product.
Licensing has changed, and it is the one item driving support calls in this upgrade / update.
Upcoming Conferences
VMware Empower (for Partners only) – Atlanta, GA 4/15-4/19
VMware Empower (for Partners only) – Singapore, 4/24-4/26
Nutanix .NEXT – Anaheim, CA 5/7-5/9
Red Hat Summit – Boston, MA 5/7-5/9
VMware Empower (for Partners only) – (location TBD) 5/20-5/23
HPE Discover – Las Vegas, NV 6/18-6/20
VMworld 2019 US – San Francisco, CA 8/26-8/29
VMworld 2019 EMEA – Barcelona, Spain 11/4-11/7