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.
VMware Tools 11.0.5 Released
This was just released, so maybe give it a couple of weeks before rolling out in production….
I went through and updated my lab environment, and all was good.
The Release Notes for this have a few notes that are worthy of reading.
(…and don’t forget, for Linux distros, use Open-VM-Tools)
VMware vSAN – Free Capacity
Anyone who currently has, or is planning, for vSAN, has seen that there are some requirements for free space.
This is true anywhere in computer land…. SAN arrays, Windows OS, MacOS, Linux, VMFS, etc.
This VMware Blog post highlights the reasons why there are free space requirements, and how that free space is used.
VMConAWS 1.9 – Released
Given that VMware has made it clear that VMConAWS gets new features before us on-prem vSphere users get them, I love seeing theses updates.
a vSphere Replication Import/Export feature.
vSAN object reporting and vSAN vSphere Replication now visible in reporting in capacity view.
Quite a few updates to the NSX-T implementation.
Release Notes are here.
VMware App Volumes 4 – Now GA
Not all of us have the time to join every beta out there.
App Volumes 4 has been released.
This VMware Blog post covers some of the new features coming.
Read the Release Notes here.
Watch a 6 minutes demo of these features here.
Exciting time for EUC.
VMware Enterprise PKS 1.6 release
Just a few days ago…..
Quite a few bug fixes and feature updates.
Release notes are here.
Optimize-VMwarePKS – powershell Script
Anyone who has done any Kubernetes on vSphere will understand this problem right off the bat.
Chip Zoller & Luc Dekens worked on this.
I know Chip well enough to appreciate his writing, and can image Luc Dekens is at that same level.
This work of his looks like it will help many folks get their Enterprise PKS and vSphere environments under control.
Why Kubernetes on vSphere?
Chip Zoller has another post that caught my eye this week.
I have had this conversation with so many people.
While he has 13 points called out in his post, I still fall back to a few of his items that he is highlighting.
For me, the abstraction the vSphere provides (separating VM from physical hardware), the HA & DRS features we all love, & simplified redundancy.
Give it a read.
Deploy Kubernetes on vSphere
Eric Shanks wrote up a great step by step on how to do this.
Lots of things done manually here, so you can follow along, and see what you will want to automate as you repeat this process later.
Some scripts, shell commands (for reference), and config files to get you going are all right here.
VMware vRealize Network Insight 5.1 Released
Guess what….another damn upgrade.
Its OK….this one might be worth it.
Anyone need to know about Kubernetes workloads….this is the release!
Release Notes are here.
VMware Cloud Foundation – PowerShell Module
For those that use VCF, the introduction of the public API may or may not excite you. But I bet a PowerShell Module that is for VCF might.
Take a look at this post to see the first offering of this.
Not yet supported by VMware, but I’m sure it will get there.
Veeam Acquied by Insight Partners
Veeam got acquired for $5,000,000,000
Yup. lots of zeros on that.
Been a lot of talk. I hope Gostev is right (based on his weekly newsletter to people) that nothing will change, and that this will still be a Customer focused (Support) and R&D shop.
Veeam has a great reputation. I know quite a few folks who are worried, as anyone is during/after an acquisition. Let’s see how this plays out.
Insight Partners post on their website.
Veeam post on their website.
Nutanix Move – On Prem, to AWS, & Back again
Nutanix Move is a tool that, until now, only allowed migration of VMs into Nutanix AHV.
Now, its latest version, allows you to move between AWS & any AHV cluster.
Nutanix blog post here.
Dealing with Availability & Recoverability in a VCDX Design
Jeffrey Kusters has a nice writeup that focuses on just a few points…
RTO, RPO, SLA, MTTF, MTTR, Availablity, & recoverability.
Not all workloads requires 99.999% uptime.
Give this 5 minutes of your time.
I think you’ll agree and maybe add a couple of these ideas around your next project / workload that you will deploy.
HomeLab – NUCs get updated
…and not just an update NUC, but a whole form factor update.
Rather than me talking about it, I’ll point you to William Lam’s blog, as he did a pretty good write up on the first day.
Upcoming Conferences
Aruba Atmosphere – Las Vegas, NV 3/22-3/27
VMware Empower (partner only) – Dallas, TX 4/20-4/23
Red Hat Summit – San Francisco, CA 4/27-4/29
VeeamOn – Las Vegas, NV 5/4 – 5/6
Cisco Live! – Las Vegas, NV 5/31 – 6/4
HPE Discover – Las Vegas, NV 6/23-6/25
Nutanix .NEXT – Chicago, IL 6/29 – 7/2
Microsoft Inspire – Las Vegas, NV 7/19-7/23
VMworld 2020 – San Francisco, CA 8/30-9/3
VMworld 2020 – Barcelona 11/9-11/2