Virtual Updates 2022-10-17

vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 – End of General Support
It’s the last time I’m posting this….
vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 End Of General Support ended October 15, 2022
We are all at vSphere 7, right?
….& vSphere 8 was just recently announced & should be available next week…
can upgrade from 6.7 or 7.0….
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!

vSphere 8 Released!
Cool. on schedule, October 11, 2022.
Done all the documentation around upgrades from vSphere 7.0 & vSphere 6.7 (the only supported upgrades).
Done all the documentation around new deployments & upgrades (all went well with multiple upgrades and new deployments).
Looking good.
Still need all the other upstream/downstream dependencies in line before doing any of my prod environments.
Can manage ESXi 6.7, 7.0, and 8.0 hosts.
Now…off to read the 3,585 pages of documentation for vSphere 8.0.
vSphere 8.0 Release Notes are here.
vSAN 8.0 Release Notes are here.
vSphere with Tanzu 8.0 Release notes are here.

VMware Converter returns in 6.3
There is still a need for P2V / V2V software!
I remember when this was pulled, I needed it the next day…
Release Notes are here.

vSphere has a new Release Model going forward
IA/GA (Initial Availability/General Availability) model is what you will see going forward with VMware vSphere.
An IA release is a production-quality release that meets all GA quality gates…
After IA release has wide adoption, the transition of the release to a GA release.
VMware Blog Post by Paul Turner is here.

vSphere Lifecycle Manager – vLCM vs VUM
In vSphere 7, VMware renamed Update Manager (VUM) to Lifecycle Manger.
They added image based management per cluster.
While the old VUM approach of using baselines still existed, VMware is looking to simplify the software/firmware/drivers management of all hosts in the cluster.
Well, vCenter 8.0 is the last version to support baselines.
Why does this matter?
With vLCM moving to only image based management of your cluster, this adds a new constraint in selecting ESXi hosts for your cluster….
A cluster can only have 1 combination of software/firmware/drivers in its image….
While not impacting anyone just yet, as baselines are still available, consideration should be given if buying new gear for use in vSphere going forward.

VMware Tanzu itself is NOT Kubernetes
True, as VMware Tanzu is a set of products.
Same way vRealize is not a product, but a set of products.
Found Danny Alvarez’s Blog post here.
He covers the 14 products under the Tanzu name.
He summarizes the 4 different licensing tiers available.

VMware Skyline Health Diagnostics Tool
Found this on Chris Hall’s blog.
It’s like a Health Check tool you can run on your vSphere Infrastructure.
It can run offline (no internet required).
This doesn’t replace the Health Check Analyzer VMware Partners use.
It can give you some good insights into your environment.
Took ~15 minutes to run on vSphere 7.0.3 (no vSAN) with 8 hosts.
Looks like a good tool, not sure why it is hidden by VMware on the downloads page.
VMware Blog Post is here.
VMware KB 81931 with download link is here.
(could not find a way to the appliance without the KB).

VMware Horizon Cloud – Network Port Diagram
VMware Blog post is here.

vCenter 8 – deploying on VMware Workstation & Fusion
Of course William Lam makes an appearance…
He captured how to do this for easier versions of vSphere, and as of now, vCenter 8.0 will need a tiny workaround to do this.
Check out his post here with the details.

AsBuiltReport – quite a few Updates
Reporting on quite a few different solutions:
Dell, Microsoft AD, NetApp, Nutanix, Pure, Rubrik, Veeam, & VMware.
Link to their GitHub is here.

Nutanix AOS 6.5.1.5 released
This adds some CVE remediations.
Magnus Andersson’s post covers this.

NDB (Nutanix DataBase) – 2.5 now released
NDB is the new name for Nutanix Era.
NDB is to SQL admins, as
Virtualization is to Server Admins.
Templates, easy OS & App upgrades, scheduling of tasks, cloning and presenting DBs to others, and supports many different DBs.
Check out Magnus Andersson’s post 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 Europe – November 7 – November 11
HashiCorp Learn
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
VMware Explore 2022 (sessions)
VMware Explore VMTN Sessions (vBrownBag)
VCDX Mentoring Series