Virtual Updates 2020-11-02

Continuing Education
Most of us who work in IT spend quite a bit of time learning new things.
I can’t remember a year where I haven’t been learning something new.
Wanted to put together a list of good training offerings that are out there, many are free & there are some pay for sites int he list, and keep this list going every week (it’ll be at the bottom going forward).
A Cloud Guru
CodeClouds
HashiCorp Learn
KubeAcademy
Nutanix University
PluralSight
vBrownBag
VMware Hands On Labs

vSphere with Tanzu – getting started with
Want to kick the tires of vSphere with Tanzu?
Wouldn’t you know it, William Lam has an automated deployment script that is based on his nested lab.
Yes, there are a few additional steps to get the Tanzu pieces working, but not much.
Took me ~40 minutes to get his completely nested environment running in my lab (1 x vCenter, 3 x ESXi hosts, HA-Proxy, and ready to configure Tanzu).

ESXi on ARM – Network Install
William Lam has another awesome post….
How to perform network install, and negate the requirement of SD cards in a Raspberry Pi.
This looks a bit involved, but it can save some aggravation, and means you only need the USB attached drive for the Raspberry Pi to get it functioning.
I plan on trying this setup once my new Pi gets here.

vCenter HA – revisited
There is vSphere HA, and then there is vCenter HA.
vSphere HA is what we all know & love…if there is a host failure, the VMs that were running on that host restart on another node in the cluster.
vCenter HA is a setting you can enable in vCenter (select vCenter, configure tab), that will create a passive vCenter node, and a witness vCenter node, so that if you lost a host that vCenter (active node) was running on, the vCenter Server (passive node) becomes the active vCenter.
In my reading, noticed that it vSphere 7.0.1 Update A, states that failover is instantaneous.
Will add this to my list of things to validate in the lab…

VMware Workspace ONE – Mobile Flows
This post is cool collection of examples of Mobile Flows, OOTB (out-of-the-box) configurations, & integration with ServiceNow.
Great overview / example of how EUC (End User Computing) differs greatly from VDI.
Reading is quick & easy, but there are 10 minutes of videos here too.

VMware vCenter 7.0 Update 1A released
Looks like SRM didn’t work with 7.0 Update 1, so here is 1A!
Already did an upgrade and fresh install…..looks / acts just like Update 1.
Release Notes are here.

vRealize Log Insight 8.2 released
Took a bit, but vRLI got its 8.2 release to align with the rest of the vRealize offerings this past week.
Quite a few new features.
VMware Blog post is here.
Release Notes are here.

VMware NSX-T 3.1 Released
Substantial What’s New section….definitely needs a full read.
Big one is simplified NSV-V to NSX-T migration
Release Notes are here.

VMware Horizon 7.13 released
Looks like this might be the last 7.x release of Horizon View.
Maybe its me, but I would have skipped # 13.
One big benefit is that Instant Clones are now done the Horizon 2006 way…They don’t need a powered up Parent VM (Smart Provisioning).
Release Notes are here.

VMware DEM 2009 released
Release Notes are here.

VMware App Volumes 2009 released
Release Notes are here.

VMware Horizon 2006 – Planning & Architecting
Sean Massey, a VMware Staff Cloud Solutions Architect, has a great series of posts around Horizon 2006 (or Horizon 8).
I was reading up on this, as a refresher.
Part 4 – AD Considerations, called out to me….
Something as simple as AD not having Sites & Services configured can cause you many hours of aggravation, more so for your users…..
Separate OU structure for VDI….so often overlooked, or done the way it has always been done, well, because that’s how we have always done it.
Give his series of posts a view, if you are planning on any VDI solution….

vROPs & vRNI Integration
With vROPS 8.2 and vRNI (vRealize Network Insight) 6.0, these products integrate & can map the communications between VMs right in your vROPs session.
Not just vROPs, but public cloud workloads too!!!
VMware Blog post is here.

PowerCLI & vSphere Tags for HCX use during migration
William Lam has been busy.
Another post on vGhetto, for more automation.
If you are using/planning to use HCX, never hurts to read up and prepare.

vSphere 7 – PowerCLI to Renew Certificates
With browsers starting to only trust certificates that have a one year lifespan, that means we are going to be renewing a lot of certificates out there……
You can find the script here on VMware Code.

VMware Flings of Note
ESXi on ARM 1.1 released, and can run RAW (no UEFI requirement).

Nutanix Prism Central 2020.9 released
Just released, and with my lab, I’ll get it deployed.
For Production, well,….my wait 30 days mantra still applies….
Release Notes are here.

Nutanix Multi-Site Private Cloud Reference Architecture
Magnus Andersson pointed me to a great Reference Architecture for Nutanix.
at 194 pages, its not a light read, but there is so much great information here!
I know where I’ll be spending some time this week.

Nutanix Era via Nutanix Calm
Magnus Andersson has a great 5 minute video covering how to use Calm and Era together for easy DB creation.
DB as a Self Service Portal action? Yes Please.