Virtual Updates 2019-08-05

VCDX Workshop at VMworld
Are you prepping for the VCDX certification?…and heading to VMworld?
Plan on being there for Sunday August 25 from 1:15pm – 6:00pm.
Its right near the Moscone, where VMworld takes place.
all you have to do is register via this link….

VTUG Summer Slam 2019
VTUG (Virtualization Technology User Group) has been around for a long time. This was the last event of the 13,000+ user community.
Paul Braren, of TinkerTry.com, put up a great post about the event.
Great take on the event, and a long list of links to theCUBE interviews.
(if you’d prefer theCUBE site’s link, here you go)

Upgrading AppDefense to vSphere Platinum
With AppDefense getting so much interest & traction, there was always a gotcha depending on how you purchased it.
There is the on-prem model, and the SaaS model.
The difference was the SaaS model allowed you to integrate with vCenter as a plugin, and work with AppDefense output in the vSphere Web Client.
This post by VMware shows that if you have deployed it previously on-prem, you can upgrade and get the benefit of a plugin in the vSphere Web Client.
I can only assume that moving forward, regardless of how you license it, it will be available in the vSphere Web Client.

VMware Cloud Marketplace (beta) – Now has Bitnami Catalog!
I knew this was coming sometime soon (refer to previous post).
This is only the first step of many….I expect to see this getting items into vRA rather quickly as we move forward (opinion without any facts backing it).

VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation) Simplifying Deployments
Now, while this is an obviously self-helping post for VMware vSAN HCI, it does highlight a lot of what we take for granted when working with traditional storage solutions.
Only takes 2 minutes to read, and shows how much we overlook in what we do in our day to day lives.

VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation) 3.8 Released
Following up on that, the latest release is out.
vRSLCM (vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager) now covers vRLI, vROPs, & vRA
Want an overview of VCF?
vMiss.net covers it nicely here, breaking it down by component.
Documentation is here.
Release note are here.
Release notes for VxRail versions are here.
Supported VxRail version are here in this compatibility matrix.

VMware brings VCF to GPC (Google Private Cloud)
This is a bit different than the VMware on AWS offering….
This is more like the VMware on Azure offering.
With CloudSimple handling all the complexity, VMware on GCP is now easy.
VMware announcement here.

VMware Workspace ONE UEM 1907
UEM (Unified Endpoint Management,….not User Environment Manager) got its update this month.
Take a look at the YouTube video highlighting What’s New.
10 minute video.

Workspace ONE – August 2019 What’s New
A long 45 minute video covering what’s new.
Haven’t watched this one yet, so no thoughts on it.

VMware VVD 5.1 release
VVD (VMware Validated Designs) 5.1 got released.
Release Notes are here.
Lots of updates to the software versions supported.
Not sure if I missed it in previous updates, but I now see SkyLine Collector int he list of supported software.

VMware NSX-T Profiles
With NSX-V having been what most of us have used, and NSX-T being considered by many, you’ll be relearning a few things.
One of those is the profiles.
This post by the VMware Livefire Team keeps it short and sweet.

VMware & HPC (High Performance Compute)
Not something many of us need, but those who do, really push the limits of hardware to eek out the most performance.
This youtube video is a short 4 minute overview of how you can do HPC on VMware.
While the video covers basics most VMware Admins know, but shows an HPC with Resource Pools used correctly!

VMware Certification updated
OK, so the exams are still the same, but the certification you earn will now have the year 2019 associated with it.
Karl Childs posted this a few days back.

VMware Cloud on AWS Master Specialist 2019 exam – study guide
Jeffrey Kusters has his take on what to study if you are taking this exam.
Nicely written, short and sweet.
Thanks for putting all the relevant PDF links into this post, Jeffrey!

VMware Flings
VM Compute Optimizer
This one is cool. Tells you which VMs are not optimized (assuming for NUMA configurations???). It will tell you how many sockets & cores to configure (people know I usually am against this, as it requires lining up within a NUMA node).
This is not vROPs (is the VM over/under sized).

Synology Updates its VAAI support for vSphere 6.x
Homelab rejoice!
vSphere 6.7 has NFS VAAI support on the Synology.
You can find the plugin via this link.
Use Update Manager to push it to your ESXi hosts, or load it at the ESXi console itself.

Upcoming Conferences
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
VeeamOn – Las Vegas, NV 5/4 – 5/6 (2020)