vSphere 7 End of support
Didn’t we just have this conversation about vSphere 6?
Just doing some digging, and found that vSphere 7 end of support date is:
April 2, 2025.
2 years, 3 months folks!
VMware Explore (VMworld) no longer in San Francisco
Well, I am sure a lot of people will be happy this will no longer be in SFO.
Las Vegas is the probable location, which means Mandalay Bay is also probable.
Found this BizJournals article noting this.
VMware vSphere 8.0 vCPU Topology Performance Study
If you’ve had time to dive into the details of VMX-20 on vSphere 8, you will notice that you can no longer adjust CPUs per Core in the CPU setting (it now just states “Assigned at Power On”.
This has been moved to the VM Options Tab, CPU Topology (including Hot-CPU Add, which I’ll still recommend turning on when building a template VM).
There are more knobs to tune there, but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should….
Well, VMware just released the vSphere 8 vCPU Topology Performance Study (which is a short 25 pages).
Covering NUMA and vNUMA, and in essence, how in nearly all cases, means we consumers should not be configuring “cores per socket”, as the software does this better than we can….just remember that it ONLY does that when you power on a VM, as THAT is when the VMX file is loaded up.
vSphere 8.0 Update A released
Been pretty happy with 8.0 and 8.0a so far….
Just waiting on support from my backup vendor to move my “production” environment to 8.0….
vCenter release notes are here.
ESXi release notes are here.
Great Feature in vSphere 8 – VM Reboot Policy
Mentioned this before, but its worth mentioning again…
Previously only available via setting a VMX option, now part of vSphere 8.
You can configure VMs (well, the ESXi host technically) so that, during the next reboot of the Guest OS…the VM will actually power off, then power on again.
VERY useful if you are updating EVC mode, and want the VM to take advantage of the new EVC mode.
Sometimes, you just need/should power off & power on a VM.
The advantage to this setting, is that you can configure the PowerOff/PowerOn, and when the VM reboots next time, it will perform this power operation…. no need to make a project out of it.
William Lam’s post is here.
Bob Plankers’ post about the VMX option prior to vSphere 8 is here.
vSAN ESA or OSA – which one is for you?
Of course, Duncan Epping covers it beautifully here, with a details answer of…
It depends.
OSA (Original Storage Architecture) is the way we have always thought about vSAN, with Cache & Capacity disks.
Remember, ESA (Enhanced Storage Architecture) is the new architecture that does away with Disk Groups.
Some big points are 25-GbE, and all NVMe drives.
Other tradeoffs exists, but the above 2 points (my opinion) are primary drivers.
Nutanix AOS 6.5 NVD released
NVD (Nutanix Validated Designs) covers the current release of AOS.
Only a few months from release to NVD…not bad!
Don’t forget…NVDs do allow for swapping or not using all components…
Online NVD is here….I prefer to download the PDF for a point in time reference, as online documentation does change….
NDB Maintenance Windows
NDB (Nutanix DataBase) is to DBAs, what Virtualization was to server admins.
Magnus Andersson has a 2-part post showing the configuration of maintenance windows.
Nutanix can now run Amazon EKS (anywhere)
Cool….Nutanix embraces another Kubernetes solution.
There’s Nutanix Karbon (it’s own offering)…
Red Hat OpenShift…
…and now Amazon EKS.
AWS’s announcement 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 2023 – Expected Aug 28-Aug31
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