Virtual Updates 2024-05-27

VMware (Broadcom) offers Workstation & Fusion Pro for free
Never expected that!
Free for personal use….commercial use still requires a license.
Great for us at home using Workstation/Fusion!
VMware Blog post is here.
New to Broadcom download page….here’s a guide.

Nutanix .NEXT 2024
…just wrapped up.
Jump to the bottom of this post to see all the hubub….Or…
Here are many of the links to PDFs…
Nutanix and NVIDIA Collaborate to Accelerate Enterprise AI Adoption
Nutanix Adds Power Monitoring to Help Customers Track Sustainability Progress
Nutanix Accelerates Hypervisor Innovation to Drive Enterprise Modernization
Nutanix and Dell Technologies Collaborate on New Joint Solutions for Hybrid Multicloud
Nutanix Simplifies Management and Operations of Kubernetes Clusters Anywhere to Speed Innovation
Nutanix Accelerates Enterprise Adoption of Generative AI
Nutanix and EDB Partner to Deliver a Modern Data Platform

ESXi 8.0 Update 2c released
Release Notes are here.

New VMware Learning Platform
Different experience for VCF / non-VCF users….
VMware Blog post is here.

Horizon View – frozen screen for Windows 11 with NVIDIA
Known issue.
Steve Wagner covers the fixes for now.

Horizon View – Omnissa & VMware’s offerings.
You will still get vCenter, ESXi, and vSAN with Horizon (which is VVF).
Named & Concurrent users licensing available, in 1-3-5 year terms.
Omnissa’s blog post is here.

Win11 Debloat
Found this PowerShell script the other day.
removes bloatware, and declutter the installed apps.
Interesting, but haven’t tried it yet.
Link to Raphire’s GitHub here.

Navigating the new Broadcom Support Portal
Well, only new for us VMware folks….
posting again, as there is so much grief from folks about how to navigate.
William Lam’s post again….
Another William Lam post with links to many useful components…
Another post from a newcomer, showing the location of Licensing

New Broadcom Website review – SARCASM Included….
OK, so this is just funny to read.
If you’ve tried to use the Broadcom website, you get it….
I still can’t navigate it without it taking 20 minutes to find my downloads….
Kudos to the author, Matthew Duggan….

Veeam now supports Proxmox VE
Covers most hypervisors now…..
Veeam News post is here.

The origins of AHV
It is less than 4 minute read….
Nutanix Blog post is here.

Nutanix & Red Hat
Nutanix and Red Hat Expand Collaboration to Power the Next-Generation of Virtualized and Cloud-Native Workloads….that’s the whole name of the post…
In short, it looks like Nutanix is replacing the CentOS images (core to many things including its AOS) with RHEL.
My guess was they were going to move to Rocky…was I wrong!
Red Hat post is here!

AOS 6.8 eSTS
eSTS (Extended Stort Term Support)
Long list of notes….worth reading.
LTS/STS/eSTS? ….yea, I’ve always championed LTS.
Might break my opinion on this release though….
AOS 6.8 Release Notes are here.
Prefer Magnus’ condensed version?
Explore New Features & Enhancements in AOS 6.8

Prism Central 2024.1 released
Nice to see quite a few of those new features….
PC 2024.1 release notes are here. (login required)
Prefer Magnus’ condensed version?

Nutanix Central
Want to see all your Prism Centrals in one place?
Generally available now!
Read about it on the main Nutanix Product page.
Nutanix 5-minute YouTube video covers it here.

AHV with Windows 11
Credential Guard, Secure Boot, and of course, vTPM.
I might differ on joining the domain, but this is for desktop images to use for VDI use cases, so I’ll let it slide….
Requires AOS 6.8.
Here’s a blog post with a great walkthrough!

Nutanix US (Unified Storage) gets update
Now Files and Objects are at version 5.
Lots of things in the backend have been updated…
Files Release Notes are here. (Magnus’ condensed version here)
Objects Release Notes are here. (Magnus’ condensed version here)

Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box on AOS 6.7
A NVD (Nutanix Validated Design).
What you need, and how to be ready to deploy.

NDB (Nutanix Database Service) gets updated
…and now supports MariaDB and ….
MariaDB blog post is here.
NDB Release Notes are here. (Magnus’ condensed version here)

Nutanix Project Beacon
Hybrid Multicloud PaaS (Platform as a Service).
….a “cloud native AOS”….
HMMMmmmmm…..
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).
Free Learning – GitHub Repo
HashiCorp Learn
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
PluralSight
Udemy
vBrownBag
VeeamOn – June 3-5 (Fort Lauderdale, FL and online)
VMware Customer Connect Learning
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2024 – August 26-29 (Las Vegas, NV – Venetian Hotel)
VMware Explore 2023 Sessions (William Lam’s easier to search list version)
VMware Explore VMTN Sessions (vBrownBag)
VCDX Mentoring Series