Virtual Updates 2022-06-13

vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 – End of General Support
Don’t forget that vSphere 6 is phasing out, and that most people should be moving to vSphere 7.
So far, vSphere 7.0.3 Update 3c seems to be very stable.
vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 End Of General Support ends October 15, 2022
This only leaves just under 7 months to get to vSphere 7.
VMware End of Support pages are here.
Don’t forget that SD cards are no longer recommended by VMware!
That means you need SSD or NVMe for boot drives now!

VMUT Advantage Sale!
Depending how many people jump on this offer, the discount will get up to 15% off the list price of $200
Folks love that you get all the licenses you need for you home lab (yes there are a few other benefits too, but I always hear about the home lab licenses).
Support your favorite blog author, below is Duncan & William’s links.
Support Duncan Epping
Support William Lam

VMware Tanzu Editions – explained
Well, VMware Tanzu has quite a few products under this brand.
Few things keep changing over the years on how this is licensed.
This post was useful to me just this past week.
Covers all the different editions of Tanzu (including community edition), what components are included, and the use case for each.

App Volumes Multi-Instance Reference Architecture
Nice way to keep your many App Volumes instances in sync!
Just found this reference architecture on VMware Techzone.

Zerto brings Linux based ZVMs
Finally…..
Linux based ZVMs managed by the Zerto manager.
Check out justin’s post on the topic

Want a computer doing > 1 exaflop?
HPE built an AMD powered supercomputer called Frontier.
Probably a little much for my house….
Check out this article on HPCwire.

Nutanix Kubernetes options
With Nutanix, you have 2 options for running K8s….
You can run RedHat’s OpenShift (partnership formalized in 2021).
You can also run NKE (Nutanix Kubernetes Engine – formally called Karbon).
This Nutanix post covers the why, and some of the options you have.

Nutanix AHV – why it was created
Once I read the story, I did remember the details.
A short 1 minutes read on where AHV (and Foundation) came from, and what prompted the need for these pieces of software….

Nutanix 6.0 certified for DoDIN
DoDIN (Department of Defense Information Network) probably focuses on security….a lot….just guessing….
With the new Nutanix AOS 6.5 LTS release (expected sometime soon – gut instinct, not fact) getting on the DoDIN Approved Product List, I believe that will make many customers happy that things are secured out of the box.
Nutanix Blog post here.

Nutanix add over-commit memory
Overcommitting memory in your VMware ESX has always been possible (since version 1.5.1). Still lots of folks get into trouble overcommitting memory, especially during a maintance window or HA event.
Well, Nutanix just started adding Memory overcommit.
Not sure how I feel about that, but when used for the appropriate type of Service/Performance SLA, I bet it will be fine, though I’m not about to start considering that for clusters where performance is the primary design criteria.
Memory is cheap (considering the problems a lack of memory can cause).
Nutanix Blog post is here.

Continuing Education – a list of resources that come with references
(of people who have used those sites & are happy with the results).
VMware Explore 2022 – August 28 – Sept 1 (San Francisco, CA)
VMware Explore 2022 Europe – November 7 – November 11
HashiCorp Learn
HPE Discover 2022 – June 28-30 (Las Vegas, NV)
Kode Kloud
KubeAcademy
Nutanix University
PluralSight / A Cloud Guru (PluralSight purchased A Cloud Guru)
Udemy
vBrownBag
VMware Customer Connect Learning (old VMware Learning Zone)
VMware Hands On Labs
VMworld Sessions (2021, 2020, 2019)