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.
Windows VMs, and HDD UUIDs
So a customer of mine was having an issue.
Some backup jobs were not quieting the Windows VMs properly.
Now, this environment has VMs built from template, and these templates were created / updated since the 5.x timeframe.
Turns out, they found a number of KB articles and an awesome post by Cody Hosterman regarding this topic (which is actually an XCOPY informative post).
The VMware KB focuses on how Windows 2008, 2012, and 2016 show LUN UUIDs.
In short, reading through these posts, and understanding that the VMs that had the setting of disk.EnableUUID = TRUE did not have issues with the VSS Quiese ……
Either way, this forced me to sit and put a script together to check for specific VMX settings, correct them if set wrong, or add them in if they did not exist.
VMware – Shared RDMs for WSFC (Windows Server Failover Cluster)
Sometimes, things show up right when you need them.
At work, we have a project with the contents of this post up for discussion.
It covers vSphere 5.x (no longer supported, but its covered), and 6.x release.
It covers the Physical vs Virtual bus sharing.
It links to the documentation on how to build a WSFC.
It really covers a lot of best practices (regarding the shared storage presentation) on clustering 2 VMs together on vSphere in a short 2 minute read, and links to all the deep documentation around those topics.
VMware NSX-T 2.4.1 released
With this latest patch, a few issues are resolved.
Release notes are here.
VMware Aquires Bitnami
Um…..I did not expect this, but I can completely understand why….
Bitnami is probably familiar for those using AWS Marketplace…. they create appliances for easy consumption by the end user.
I can see this easily being added to catalog, as consumption can range from AWS workloads, to OVAs (for vSphere), to K8s, and of course, Docker.
I’m sure it will take a bit of time, but I believe these might end up being native catalog items for consumption in the VMware Cloud offerings, as well as within vRA (vRealize Automation).
vROPs (vRealize Operations) & VMC on AWS (VMware Cloud on AWS)
Given that so many people use vROPs, and lots of folks are considering, or have already started using VMC on AWS, this is a great VMware post.
It covers the various options for monitoring / managing hybrid-cloud environments.
Given, this is with regards to VMC on AWS, but I would bet that this is exactly what will apply to VMC on Azure, and VMC on DellEMC…..
VMware Horizon Connections Explained
This post is great. Thanks to Graeme Gordon for putting this together.
What’s different about this post than reading the View Documentation?
It breaks down the protocols, how users connect, the steps to connect to the desktop being delivered.
Short, sweet, easy to understand.
Deploying Splunk on vSphere
If you are considering it, you know it requires a bit more attention than just a couple of file server VMs might…..
A VMware Blog post covers how this might work on vSAN, and has some links to Splunk documents about considerations when deploying Splunk in a virtualized environment (every Business Critical app has these best practices / reference architecture documents).
vROPs Dashboard – VM Base Cost Analysis
You have seen that there is a vROPs Dashboard collection available, and I just quickly peek over once in a while….
This VM Base Cost Analysis dashboard seems cool to break down costs for a VM (which is possible since we can see the vRealize Business is being built into vROPs to give metrics back to us).
Wonder what other gems you might find if you looking through the collection
VMware Mangle
Want to run Chaos scenarios in your vSphere Environment?
That’s what this GitHub by VMware is.
VMware Visio Icons – from the VVD Collection
I think I posted this a few weeks back, but it deserves a repost either way….
Found this post from Peter van de Bree.
It points out the downloadable Visio Stencils from the VMTN site.
Finally!
A list of Storage Simulators & VSA (Virtual Storage Appliances)
So happy that Neil Anderson had the time to put this together.
A list broken out, of about ~30 appliances that can either be demos, simulators, or Virtual Storage Appliances.
Check this out, and play around.
Even enable shared storage for your nested labs….
Want Satellite as a Service? – AWS Ground Station
OK, so most of us DON’T need to test satellite uplinks and communications….but it is now there….AWS Ground Station
I wonder how this costs compared to t2.micro EC2 instances????
Upcoming Conferences
CiscoLive! – Sand Diego, CA 6/9-6/13
HPE Discover – Las Vegas, NV 6/18-6/20
AWS re:Inforce – Boston, MA – 6/25-28
VMworld 2019 US – San Francisco, CA 8/26-8/29
Microsoft Ignite – Orlando, FL 10/4-10/8
VMworld 2019 EMEA – Barcelona, Spain 11/4-11/7
AWS re:Invent – Las Vegas, NV 11/25-11/28