Virtual Updates 2020-10-05

vSphere Clustering Service (vCLS)
With vSphere 7 update 1, you’ll need to be aware of this.
vCLS, in short, is 3 x VMs that manage and orchestrate DRS for you.
VMware is removing the dependency on vCenter for DRS operations.
Looks like Agent VM settings need to be revisited…..
VMware Blog post is here.

Tanzu Mission Control expanding Policy based Management
It is all about security, and policy definition nowadays.
Define your polices and apply to your workloads.
VMware Blog post is here.

VMworld Announcement Summaries
My summary is short.
Lots of announcements, but very few focused on vSphere itself.
Networking, Edge, Kubernetes, ….those were the big items this year.
SASE (Secure Access, Service Edge), if you haven’t heard it yet is called out a lot.
Here is the VMworld Announcement Summary
Here is the Media Kit link covering all announcements.
Here is a summary of EUC Announcements, by Shawn Bass.

VMware Connect Learning – free for 12 months!
What is VMware Connect Learning?
It is the new name for what use to be VMware Learning Zone.
Well, announced was 12 months free of the Premium Subscription for VCL.
You can get this here, at the VMware site.
THERE IS A TON OF STUFF IN HERE!!!!!
I’ve taken a couple of courses, and it is worth the time invested.

VMworld 2020 Content – online now!
Just get registered on the VMworld Web Site.
Get access to over 900 sessions on all the tracks…..
Vision & Innovation, Virtual Cloud Network, App Modernization, Multi-Cloud, Intrinsic Security, Digital Workspace, & of course….Telco 5G.
Once in….browse the Content Catalog for full access!

KubeAcademy Pro – by VMware
Free training? yes please.
KubeAcademy requires a login to get the full set of training….but that’s it.
VMware Blog post is here.

VMware vCloud on Demand Disaster Recovery
Another attempt at this?
OK….what’s different?
Looks like you can replicate to the cloud, and quickly spin things up…all without incurring an SDDC VMConAWS cost while JUST replicating.
….all inferred, but could be a game changer.
Duncan Epping puts in his two cents on his site.
Hands on Labs for this is here (not available in HOL till after VMworld).
VMware Blog post is here.
YouTube playlist is here.

VMware Project Monterey
In words taken from the blog post…
Project Monterey is a rearchitecture of VCF from the hardware up to support all the new requirements of modern applications enabled by Project Pacific.
VCF that supports SmartNICs (more on that later).
If its is like Project Pacific, it will take a year to mature and be available.
In the interim, nice to see the future shown a bit early.
Performance, unified/consistent operations, zero-trust security model.
VMware Blog post is here (its a bit longer than most).

vSAN 7 get HCI Mesh
Ever want to share the capacity of one vSAN Cluster with another?
Now you can.
VMware Blog post is here.”
Another blog post is here.

VMware UEM Freestyle Orchestrator
A workflow, Visio like, tool to handle device management.
Really cool.
Was called out in the UEM Keynote.

vRealize Network Insight 6.0 released
Both for on Prep or cloud service….
Lots of new features, including HCX app mapping
VMware Blog post is here.

VMware SRM 8.3.1 released
Yes, bug fixes, but I think this has the code for the DR offerings I just mentioned.
Release Notes are here.
YouTube video exploring these features is here.

VMware vRealize AI Cloud
Stolen right from the blog post….
vRealize AI Cloud, now included with vRealize Operations Cloud with vRealize Cloud Universal subscription, is a self-optimizing service that uses machine learning and reinforcement learning techniques to continuously learn, adapt, and optimize your storage KPIs to deliver consistent and optimal performance for your mixed application workloads.
VMware Blog post is here.

Horizon 7.12 – learning the basics
Carl Webster put together a series of posts to get you started with the basics of VMware Horizon View 7.12.
Not to worry, much of this translates to the View 8.x release as well.
This is a 17 part series.
I’ve looked at it, and if you’ve never touched VDI (View) before, it gives you a great overview of the WHOLE solution, not just 1 part.

VMware to acquire SaltStack
Adding to the Cloud Automation capabilities VMware has, SaltStack
Why? The ability to deploy to build and deploy to any cloud.
VMware Blog post is here.

VMware ends support of IE 11
Not that we SHOULD be using it nowadays….
Here is VMware’s Blog post on the end of support.

VMware Flings of Note
App Volumes Entitlement Sync – gets an update