vSphere 6.7 End of Support date extended
People were unsure why VMware had vSphere 6.5 and 6.7 with the same end of support date in November 2021.
Well, now vSphere 6.7 has an end of support date of October 15, 2022.
VMware Blog post is here.
vSphere 7 – Kubernetes Pods Explained
I like Mike Foley’s ability to explain nearly anything.
His focus on security over the past years has been awesome.
Now he’s explaining how vSphere Pods work on vSphere 7.
A quick read, and you understand it.
Do you need to know the details of how to run apps in containers?
No (helps, but not required), but as a vSphere Amin (or IaaS provider now), you need to get a good understanding of what you’ll be running.
vSphere 7 – Lifecycle Management
A change to the way “patching” is done in vSphere 7.
We leave the old Update Manager “baselines” behind, and move to Image Management.
Image Management is declarative (pick version, OEM integrations, add-ons).
Image is deployed throughout cluster (another reason clusters members should be consistently configured).
VMware Blog post is here highlighting it, if you haven’t sat with me yet to describe.
vSphere 7 DRS – Scalable Shares Deep Dive
Frank Denneman tackles this topic beautifully.
Changes Resource Pools entirely!
Granted, he’s one of the ultimate guru’s we look up to, and has authored enough books that most of us refer to, so yea….solid reference.
Take a look at his post here.
Takes ~10-15 to read.
Remember….Resource Pools are NOT folders!
Tanzu Mission Control – add vSphere 7 TKG Cluster
Simon wrote up a nice walkthrough on this….
Adding a TKG (Tanzu Kuberenetes Grid)
Pretty detailed too.
ESXi 7 Boot Volume Changes Explained
For those already playing with vSphere 7, you have seen the layout of the ESXi hosts boot volume drastically change (partition sizes and uses).
USB/SD/HDD differences explained.
Good to know information, especially as upgrades are being planned for later this calendar year (once SP1 comes out).
VMware Blog post is here.
Move vSphere from LDAP to LDAPS
This YouTube video covers the Microsoft patches and the vSphere configuration changes you need to do to be able to use Windows AD as LDAPS as the changes from Microsoft come due….
Bill Hill does a great job demonstrating the changes in this 30 minute video.
How I (and most of my team) have been configuring, and how we will modify that configuration from LDAP to LDAPS.
Even references the Bob Plankers blog post from earlier this year!
VMware Workstation & Fusion – updated!
With the recent updates to both products, you have new useful features.
Fusion can run containers natively.
Workstation can now run alongside Hyper-V (not to run VMs in both offerings, but to take advantage of features like VBS or Device/Credential Guard).
VMware Blog post on Workstation is here.
VMware Blog post on Fusion is here.
PowerCLI 101
Found someone who put together a nice, multi-part series, getting started with PowerCLI.
This link is for the collection of posts, so you can easily navigate it.
You won’t be an expert in PowerCLI, but this gives you a targeted, well written, set of examples to get started with.
Just remember to not “play” on production 😉
VMware vSphere Bitfusion
Requires vSphere Enterprise Plus licensing….
Elastic infrastructure for AI/ML workloads.
I don’t think it will stop there, but that’s the first offering….
VMware Blog post is here.
Melissa Palmer’s (@vMiss) take on it here.
VMware Flings of Note
VMware OS Optimization Tool – got updated!
Horizon Helpdesk Utility – got updated!
How to install WSL 2 on Win10 May 2020 Update
Noted this just the other day…
Nice walkthrough on how WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) 2 is installed on the latest Win10 update.
…now with real linux kernel!
Pure beating up DellEMC PowerStore
I’ve seen quite a few of these.
I’ll let you form your own opinion of this new PowerStore offering.
Here’s the Pure Storage take on this new DellEMC offering.
Nutanix Era updated to 1.3
The DBaaS (DataBase as a Service) offering from Nutanix is updated.
Caught this on Derek Seaman’s blog.
Release notes are here.
Upcoming Conferences
VeeamOn – Virtual! 6/17-6/18
HPE Discover – Virtual! TBD
Nutanix .NEXT – irtual! 6/29 – 7/2
Microsoft Inspire – Virtual! TBD
VMworld 2020 – Virtual! 9/28-9/31