Virtual Updates 2021-04-05

VMware Cloud Universal – introdction
VMware now has this thing call “VMware Cloud Universal” (…VCU?).
Essentially, buying VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation) and having the ability to deploy the software in any cloud….
I can see this being an enabler for those who want to run vSphere with Tanzu, but I’m pretty sure that can be done in the cloud pretty easily as the main components are already there….
I’m interested to see how this plays out…..
VMware Blog post is here.

Northeast Regional VMUG Virtual UserCon
“In just one day, you can virtually explore the newest VMware content and get connected with hundreds of IT professionals in the Northeast region.”
Looks like a full day of content!
Check it out and learn a bit more about what used to be called VDI, and in now referred to as EUC (End User Computing). 

vSAN 7.0.2 Update 2 – Stretched Cluster & DRS
Duncan Epping has a 5-minute video covering this enhancement.
vSAN File Services in a Stretched Cluster covered here in a 4-minute video.

vCenter Server 6.5 Patch…
If you are still on vCenter 6.5, be sure to apply the latest patches…
Release Notes are here.
Better yet,….upgrade to 6.7 or 7.0 Update 1x

VMware NSX-T 3.0.3 Released
Looks like its primarily bug fixes.
Release Notes are here.

VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.3 Released
CLI is being replaced, and is now Tanzu CLI which replaces the old Tanzu Kubernetes Grid CLI (and is much easier to say!).
One fo the new features, NSX Advanced Load Balancer Essentials (Layer-4 Load Balancing) … remember this is the old Avi Networks. Looks to me like NSX-T load balancers are slowly being transitioned to this…
Release notes are here.

Horizon View 2103 released
Noticed when downloading, that there is no longer a View Agent for 32-bit.
Along with Oracle and MS SQL, PostgreSQL DB is now an option.
Verify the version of VMware Tools in use….don’t inflict pain on yourself (such as when using View 7 and VMware Tools 11.x – VMware KB 78434).
Lots of known issues, so just give the release notes a read.
Release Notes are here.
VMware Tech Zone has a post on the What’s New as well.
Horizon on VMConAWS Architecture has been updates as well.

Horizon App Volumes 2103 released
A handful of packaging fixes, and a new setting for timeout on the Import Storage Groups (now 4 hours, previously 15 minutes).
Storage can be marked as Read-Only to prevent App Volumes from writing to it.
Release Notes are here.

Horizon Dynamic Environment Manager 2103 released
Right from the release notes page….
This release updates the main product components, VMware DEM FlexEngine and VMware DEM Management Console, as well as Helpdesk Support Tool and SyncTool. Application Profiler is not updated for the 2103 release.
Release Notes are here.

Horizon Unified Access Gateway 2103 released
Along with AWS & Azure, GCP is now supported for deployment.
Horizon Chromebook clients now support SAML
Release Notes are here.

Horizon Clients get updated for 2103
Nothing glaring, other than 32-bit support has been removed.
Release Notes are here.

Runecast Analyzer – now supporting AWS & Kubernetes
When Runecast first came out, it focused its analytics only on vSphere.
Nowadays, it covers lots of things: Log analysis, security compliance, best practices, upgrade validation, hybrid-cloud. vSphere, AWS, Kubernetes,
Check out the post here, causing me to revisit this.
Runecast site focusing on AWS & Azure capabilities.
Runecast site focusing on Security Compliance for vSphere, AWS, & Kubernetes.
The recent release of Runecast Analyzer 5.0 really takes it up a step….

Homelab – Booting an ESXi VM via HTTPS
So this is a pretty cool feature available for your nested ESXi VMs you are building…brought to you by William Lam (of course….).
His post here shows the advanced options required to make this work.
Just note, that you must be running VMX-19 (which means ESXi 7.0.2 Update2).

Nutanix X-Ray
I always love Josh Odgers take on things.
In this post, he has ran some of the same failure scenarios against the latest vSphere 7.0 Update 2 vSAN, to check out the resiliency & availability with the latest improvements.
Glad to see improvements have been made….
Even still, I read these for the snippets of how Nutanix handles these situations, and I learn something new in each of his posts.

Continuing Education – a list of resources that come with references (of people who have used those sites and are happy with the results).
A Cloud Guru
CodeClouds
HashiCorp Learn
KubeAcademy
Nutanix University
PluralSight
Udemy
vBrownBag
VMware Customer Connect Learning (old VMware Learning Zone)
VMware Hands On Labs