FROM THE EDITORS VIRTUAL DESK
Hi everyone, this week I would like to provide some detail on one of our TAM deliverables, Status Reports. As a TAM we work with both our TAM customers external to VMware as well as the internal teams that support our customers. These teams can include Sales, Engineering, Support, Product Management, System Engineers and more. In order to ensure that all of the teams and account are in sync the TAM service provides a regular update to everyone on a regular basis depending on the level of service that is provided to the TAM customer (more info here). This is an essential part of what we do, ensuring that everyone is aware of the critical projects, tasks and other items for both the customer and VMware teams and provide a visible status that can be tracked of all of these on a regular basis. If you have a TAM or are considering a TAM in your organization this is one of our many exclusive and well received deliverables providing value to your organization.
I wish you all a fantastic week ahead, enjoy this weeks news digest.
Virtually Yours
VMware TAM Team
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NEWS AND DEVELOPMENTS FROM VMWARE
- Unique Paths to the Top in Tech: VMware’s Sanjay Poonen on Fortt Knox
Last Fall, CNBC Squawk Alley anchor and technology correspondent Jon Fortt debuted a new digital show. Produced by CNBC, Fortt Knox is a treasure trove of deep discussions with the people who make things happen. Available as a podcast, Jon Fortt leads conversations with powerful people on how they n... - VMware on VMware Delivers Value to Customers
Before being released to customers, VMware products are developed and tested in collaboration with the company’s VMware on VMware (VoV) program. VMware’s First Customer The VoV program, which VMware and Dell Technologies CIO Bask Iyer calls the “company’s first customer,” uniquely benefits both VM... - Agents of Change: Liberty Global’s Colin Miles Believes Change Must Be Constant
VMware’s Agents of Change initiative celebrates smart CIOs who challenge the status quo. By harnessing the transformative power of technology, they are creating unlimited possibilities for their businesses. Here’s the next individual in the Agents of Change Series: Colin Miles, vice president of da...
- VMware Releases Dispatch, an Open Source Serverless Framework
VMware announced its serverless initiative at VMworld 2017, where a Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS) demo using Apache OpenWhisk, an existing open source FaaS technology, was presented. Since then, the serverless team has been working to define what a serverless framework by and for a VMware-based infr... - Moving to Open Source: First Impressions of a Proprietary Software Engineer
by Vladislav Valtchev, VMware Open Source Technology Center Until two months ago, my whole professional experience was as a proprietary software engineer. Here at VMware, I spent the last 4.5 years working in vSphere as a C++ platform engineer, but I used open source software my whole life. Slackwar... - Project Clarity: 1 Year of Open Source Success & a New Year of Design Innovation
Project Clarity all started with a need: All our VMware applications had different looks and feel. Because of this, our teams and our customers had so many different ways of doing the same things. To meet this need, our goal was pretty simple: standardize the visual and mic-interactions driving the ...
- It’s Not Too Late to Get the Scoop on vSphere 6.5
Just before the new year, the VMware Community Roundtable podcast covered key insights to vSphere 6.5 in a live episode. In case you missed it, moderator Eric Nielsen discussed reasons to upgrade to vSphere 6.5 with the “dynamic duo” of vSphere: featured guests Himanshu Singh and Martin Yip. Singh ... - vSphere VM Encryption White Paper now available
I’d like to announce the availability of a new white paper for VMware vSphere VM Encryption! VM Encryption is a feature that was introduced in vSphere 6.5. The audience for this white paper is the Manager/Director/C-level folks who want to understand how vSphere VM Encryption differs from other vir... - vSphere 6.5 DRS and Memory Balancing in Non-Overcommitted Clusters
DRS is over a decade old and is still going strong. DRS is aligned with the premise of virtualization, resource sharing and overcommitment of resources. DRS goal is to provide compute resources to the active workload to improve workload consolidation on a minimal compute footprint. However, virtuali...
- VMware NSX for vSphere 6.4 Eases Operations, Improves Application Security with Context
Summary: Generally available today, VMware NSX for vSphere 6.4 raises the bar for application security and planning, and introduces context-aware micro-segmentation For those working in security, thinking and talking about the cyber threats in the world is a constant, a necessary evil. So, for a mo... - NSX-T: OpenAPI and SDKs
Nowadays everything is about automation. Organizations are moving away from the traditional static infrastructure to full automation and here the need of NSX is significant. There are many use-cases for NSX, but the common in all of them is that they all need to be automated. VMware is investing he... - NSX-T: Routing where you need it (Part 2, North-South Routing)
In the first part of this blog series, NSX-T: Routing where you need it (Part 1), I discussed how East-West (E-W) routing is completely distributed on NSX-T and how routing is done by the Distributed Router (DR) running as a kernel module in each hypervisor. In this post, I will explain how North-...
- Assess performance impact of Spectre & Meltdown patches using vRealize Operations Manager
With this article, I wanted to share some quick tips and tricks which can help you manage the performance of your workloads while you go through the patching process for Spectre & Meltdown vulnerabilities. Before my recommendations, here are a few things which you should know about Spectre & Meltdow... - Jan 24th Webinar: Hands on with vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager and the vRealize Code Stream Management Pack for IT DevOps
On Jan 24th, we will be hosting another Getting More Out of VMware webinar. The webinar is designed for Cloud Administrators and VI Administrators who leverage vRealize Suite products, such as vRealize Automation, to run their virtual infrastructure and cloud environment. It will be a great opportu... - Monitoring MS SQL Server Performance with Wavefront Metrics-Driven Analytics
It’s always a challenge to optimize the performance of an application to be highly available and without customer-impacting latencies. For critical application services like databases, if there is a degradation in its performance, then all other services using that database will have their perform...
- vSphere Integrated Containers 1.3 Makes Deployment Easier
We are pleased to announce the release of vSphere Integrated Containers 1.3. This newest version enhances stability and delivers a new graphical-user interface to guide users through the creation of a Virtual Container Host (VCH). What’s New: Create and Delete Wizard With more and more custome... - A Look Back at KubeCon 2017
By Ryan Clair, Senior Systems Engineer The community around Kubernetes is blossoming. Attendance for this month’s KubeCon in Austin doubled last year’s audience to hit more than 4,200 attendees. That impressive number is made all the sweeter due to VMware’s participation in KubeCon 2017 as a platin... - Diving into the VMware Pivotal Container Service Webcast Series
By Susan Wu, Senior Product Marketing Manager Kubernetes is an open source cluster and container management tool originally developed by Google to orchestrate software in containers. The system gives developers a single method for deploying, scaling and managing containers on a variety of cloud ser...
VMware End-User Computing Blog
- VMware NSX Micro-Segmentation for VMware Horizon 7
Organizations that embark on the journey of building virtual desktop environments bring traditionally external endpoints into the data center. These Windows or Linux endpoints are now closer to and often reside on the same networking infrastructure as the backend application servers that these may a... - [Video] 5 Demos of the New VMware Horizon Client for iOS 4.7
Sure, your mother says she loves all her children equally. But really, she loves each of you best for short periods of time. That’s how I feel about the VMware Horizon Clients. Today, with the 4.7 release, I particularly love the iOS client. The Horizon Client for iOS 4.7 takes advantage of the drag... - [Live Demo] Managing Windows 10 Security & Compliance With VMware Workspace ONE
Discover a new, more efficient approach to Windows lifecycle management across any use case. During this live VMware Hands-on Lab (HOL), see how VMware AirWatch offers real-time, automated security and compliance for Windows 10 management. During this HOL, you’ll learn the basics of enrolling and co...
- Top 20 vSAN articles for December 2017
Component metadata health check fails with invalid state error vSAN Build Recommendation Engine Health fails Best practices for vSAN implementations using Dell PERC H730 or FD332-PERC storage controllers Replacing SSD disk on a vSAN cluster Status of TLSv1.1/1.2 Enablement and TLSv1.0 Disablement a... - Top 20 NSX articles for December 2017
Troubleshooting vShield Endpoint / NSX Guest Introspection Guest Introspection memory usage spikes to 90+% or you see the error: “Lost communication with ESX module” in NSX-V 6.3 Deploying NSX Controller fails in NSX-v 6.3.3 and 6.3.4 ESXi 5.5 and 6.0 hosts fail with a PSOD: VMCIEventDelayedDispatc... - Top 20 vSphere articles for December 2017
vCenter Appliance root Partition 100% full due to Audit.log files not being rotated “invalid credentials LDAP Error 49” error when starting Inventory Services in vCenter Server 6.x Unable to log in to the root account of vCenter Server Appliance Important information before upgrading to vSphere 6.5... - New KB articles published for week ending 14th January 2018
VMware vCenter Server Appliance vCenter Server Appliance (and PSC) 6.5 / 6.0 Workaround for CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5754 (aka Spectre and Meltdown) Date Published: 2018/1/11 Datacenter VMware Performance Impact for CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5754 (aka Spectre and Meltdown)... - New KB articles published for week ending 7th January 2018
VMware ESXi Unable to enable FT on the Virtual machine Date Published: 2018/1/2 VMs with vVOLs based virtual disks takes long time to power on with CBT enabled Date Published: 2018/1/3 When Secure Boot is enabled, X server will fail to start on Linux VMs using a kernel older than v3.2 Date Published...
- Patching and updates made easy with VMware Cloud Foundation
Its official, VMware released the latest version of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), 2.3. At the core of VCF is a fully automated, hyper-converged software stack that includes compute, storage and networking. Completing an upgrade of all of the components of an SDDC without VCF would typically take so... - Connecting IP-Based (NFS or ISCSI) External Storage To VMware Cloud Foundation
VMware Cloud Foundation is based on a modern hyper-converged architecture that extensively leverages VMware vSAN – a vSphere-native software-defined storage platform that delivers flash-optimized storage for the software-defined data center (SDDC). While vSAN is the primary storage platform for Clo... - Introduction to VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3
On Dec 5th, 2017, VMware announced the upcoming release of VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3. This release comes with many new capabilities to help further simplify the tasks of deploying, operating and maintaining a VMware based hybrid cloud. In this post, I will introduce you to some of the more notab...
EXTERNAL NEWS FROM 3RD PARTY BLOGGERS virtuallyGhetto
- Automating Intel Sighting remediation using PowerCLI (SSH not required)
In case you may not be aware, Intel recently notified VMware that certain Intel Broadwell and Haswell CPUs are affected by Intel Sighting after applying the latest microcode update to remediate against the Spectre vulnerability. VMware has published the following KB 52345 which provides more details... - Verify Hypervisor-Assisted Guest Mitigation (Spectre) patches using PowerCLI
VMware recently published a new knowledge base (KB) article 52085 that outlines instructions for enabling the Hypervisor-Assisted Guest Mitigation (CVE-2017-5715), also known as the Spectre vulnerability. This KB also provides steps to verify the updated microcode (included in the ESXi patch) has be... - Identifying ESXi boot method & boot device
There was an interesting discussion on our internal Socialcast platform last week on figuring out how an ESXi host is booted up whether it is from local device like a disk or USB device, Auto Deploy or even boot from SAN along with its respective boot device? Although I had answered the question, I ... - Cross vCenter Clone with vSphere 6.0+
Similar to the Cross vCenter vMotion (xVC-vMotion) feature that was introduced in vSphere 6.0, Virtual Machine cloning can also be performed across two different vCenter Servers, regardless of their deployment type or SSO configurations. If vCenter Servers are part of an Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM), ... - Quick Tip - NSX-T 2.1 upgrade gotcha, use NSX Manager IP Address vs Hostname
NSX-T 2.1 was released right before the holiday break and one of the biggest enhancement is support for VMware's upcoming Pivotal Container Service (PKS) which you can read more about here. Right before I took some much needed time off with the family, I had attempted an upgrade of my existing NSX-T...
- Vembu BDR Suite 3.9.0 is GA – Backup vSphere, Hyper-V and Physical
Vembu introduced a new release of their flagship backup product Vembu Backup and Disaster Recovery Suite. The new version of Vembu BDR Suite 3.9.0 adds some significant new features such as backup to tape allowing archiving backups. Also, encryption of backups has been added allowing to protect back... - VCP6.5-DCV Objective 10.1 – Create and Manage vSphere Virtual Machines and Templates
Today’s objective is VCP6.5-DCV Objective 10.1 – Create and Manage vSphere Virtual Machines and Templates. HA, DRS and FT are core technologies of VMware clusters. It’s important to master their requirements, configuration, and troubleshooting. Check our VCP6.5-DCV Study Guide page which is starting... - VCP6.5-DCV Objective 7.5 – Troubleshoot HA and DRS Configurations and Fault Tolerance
Today’s objective is VCP6.5-DCV Objective 7.5 – Troubleshoot HA and DRS Configurations and Fault Tolerance. HA, DRS and FT are core technologies of VMware clusters. It’s important to master their requirements, configuration, and troubleshooting. Check our VCP6.5-DCV Study Guide page which is startin... - VCP6.5-DCV Objective 7.3 – Troubleshoot vSphere Upgrades and Migrations
Today’s objective is VCP6.5-DCV Objective 7.3 – Troubleshoot vSphere Upgrades and Migrations. Its kind of a “pain” topic where you must remember many different log paths for different products, remember some error codes, but that’s the way it is. Remeber and succeed or die hard trying. Work hard and... - Ravello Hardware Assisted Nested Virtualization And Bare-Metal Options For VMware VMs
Ravello has been featured on our blog in the past already several times. Our readers know that it’s a cool service for learning virtualization or expanding your home lab and run some VMs in the cloud. You have probably read some of our How-to articles to gets you started. During those times, Ravello...
- A first look at vFile – Sharing a persistent volume between containers
Regular readers will have noticed that I have been doing a bit of work recently with docker swarm, and what you need to do to get it to work on VMs running on vSphere. The reason why I had taken such an interest is because I wanted to look at a new product that our Project Hatchway team have been co... - Validating overlay network when docker swarm running on Centos VMs on vSphere
I got a chance to revisit my docker swarm deployment this week after a bit of a break. I was a little curious about my setup because when I spoke to some of our ‘Project Hatchway‘ engineers, I was told that I should be able to launch a single instance of Nginx in Docker Swarm (“docker service create... - Simple test for Docker Swarm functionality with Photon OS
After highlighting how easy it is to run docker swarm in Photon OS, I had a follow on question on how easy it would be to test the functionality. Just to recap, the only additional step you need to get Docker Swarm running on Photon OS was to open port 2377 on the master node. After that, you simply... - vSAN Essentials e-book is now free
A short note to let you know that Duncan and I have made the e-book version of our Essential Virtual SAN (vSAN) book available for free. We have now published it via the GitBook platform and you can find it on vsan-essentials.com. GitBook also gives you the option to download it in PDF, EPUB or MOBI... - Building a Docker Swarm with Photon OS
I’ve decided to take a look at our new vFile docker volume plugin. If you haven’t heard, vFile volume plugin for Docker provides simultaneous persistent volume access between hosts in the same Docker Swarm cluster for the base volume plugin service such as VDVS [vSphere Docker Volume Service], with ...
- Technology Short Take 93
Welcome to Technology Short Take 93! Today I have another collection of data center technology links, articles, thoughts, and rants. Here’s hoping you find something useful! Networking Matt Klein breaks down service mesh components, using terms networking professionals know well, like &ldqu... - Experimenting with Azure
I’ve been experimenting with Microsoft Azure recently, and I thought it might be useful to share a quick post on using some of my favorite tools with Azure. I’ve found it useful to try to leverage existing tools whenever I can, and so as I’ve been experimenting with Azure I’v... - Issue with VMware-Formatted Cumulus VX Vagrant Box
I recently had a need to revisit the use of Cumulus VX (the Cumulus Networks virtual appliance running Cumulus Linux) in a Vagrant environment, and I wanted to be sure to test what I was doing on multiple virtualization platforms. Via Vagrant Cloud, Cumulus distributes VirtualBox and Libvirt version... - Technology Short Take 92
Welcome to Technology Short Take 92, the first Technology Short Take of 2018. This one was supposed to be the last Tech Short Take of 2017, but I didn’t get it published in time (I decided to spend time with my family instead—some things are just more important). In any case, hopefully t... - Looking Back: 2017 Project Report Card
As has become my custom for the past several years, I wanted to take a look at how well I fared on my 2017 project list. Normally I’d publish this before the end of 2017, but during this past holiday season I decided to more fully “unplug” and focus on the truly important things i...
- A new update on VVols customer adoption
It’s been a while since I last reported on the customer telemetry data that we capture to track VVol adoption with 3PAR customers and wanted to provide an update. Before I share that I want to relay what I’ve seen and heard around VVols adoption in general. VVols adoption is trending upw... - How Pat Gelsinger saved VMware
I ran across this recent article in the SF Business Times and thought I would share it along with my thoughts. The article highlights VMware’s CEO Pat Gelsinger as one of the most admired CEO’s and how he helped right the VMware ship adrift in stormy seas during his tenure. You can read ... - 30 Must-Read Small Business IT Blogs 2017
I was recently honored to be included in a list of 30 must read SMB IT blogs and wanted to say thank you to BizTech for including me in that list. I looked through the blogs in that list and there is a lot of diversity in it with everything from credit card blogs to … Continue reading » ... - How VVols impacts storage protocol choices with vSphere
File vs. Block, why choose one over the other with vSphere. They both have their pros and cons which has influenced decision making when it comes to picking your storage with vSphere but VVols has changed the game of how storage protocols interact with vSphere which may also impact your decision mak... - With attendance down does this mean VMworld has jumped the shark?
As I reported in my annual post on my experiences at VMworld, attendance was down this year and in a fairly big way. VMware reported attendance at 20,000 this year which is about a 15% decline from the 23,000 who attended in 2015 & 2016. Is this a sign that less people care about what … C...
- What a start to the year...
It's been a crazy couple days on a couple fronts, but the most material front has certainly been Spectre and Meltdown. There are lots of sources, and the trick is that while distinctly the root cause lies in the CPU domain and with the CPU manufacturers- the impact touches nearly everything. It's b... - To allTHANK YOU for 2017, and lets dream of 2018!
To all my readers, all our customers and partners, all my colleagues, all my friends – heck my competitors, thank you for everything in 2017. It was a year filled with change for me in the middle of a massive integration through the Dell acquisition – with a ton of learning, a ton of personal d... - Looking forward to 2018: Vertical Stack Wars are upon us.
This is part 3 of a 3-part blog series on things that I’m thinking about going into 2018. Warning – remember, Virtual Geek post are my musings, not an official company position. They are officially my opinions – which means they aren’t worth more than 2 cents. They aren’t authored by anyone... - Looking forward to 2018Part 2: Hint, its not about infrastructure.
If you’re just catching up, this is a part of a multi-blog post epic saga (ha!) with some things that are on my mind as I reflect towards 2018. I’d encourage you to read the first part here, which discussed the way I see the HCI market choosing between “build” and “buy” choices, and reflected on h... - Looking forward to 2018Part 1: Buy to Buy and HCI (and more)
The ongoing evolution of HCI – 2017, 2018 and beyond – in three parts. In 2016, EMC (and then Dell EMC) and VMware started with several goals – one of which was to become #1 in the HCI market by the end of 2017. That mission was accomplished mid-year 2017, so check. That said, as the calendar com...
- Demo of the VMware NSX 6.4 Context-Aware Firewall
Context- aware firewall enhances the visibility at the application level and helps to override the problem of application permeability. Visibility at the application layer helps you to monitor the workloads better from a resource, compliance, and security point of view. Firewall rules cannot... - VMware NSX 6.4 - Application Rule Manager Enhancements
With the release of VMware NSX 6.4, we have made several enhancements to the Application Rule Manager including improved context awareness, automatic recommendations for firewall rule sets, and easier and faster time to value for Day 2 operations. In this video, we’ll go through the enhancem... - NSX 6.4 Troubleshooting Guide
The NSX Troubleshooting Guide describes how to monitor and troubleshoot the VMware NSX for vSphere system by using the NSX Manager user interface, the vSphere Web Client, and other NSX components, as needed. This manual is intended for anyone who wants to use or troubleshoot any problem for NS... - Demo of the new NSX 6.4 Packet Capture Tool
If your dashboard is indicating that a host is not in a healthy state, you can capture packets for that particular host for further troubleshooting. You can capture packets using the new Packet Capture tool, to help diagnose and solve network related problems. You can create a packet capt... - New White Paper - VMware vSphere 6.5 Virtual Machine Encryption
VMware vSphere 6.5 addresses the operational and security challenges by leveraging the hypervisor to perform the encryption with no modification to the VM. The security architecture of VMware ESXi achieves this goal at the hypervisor layer. In this document, Mike Foley elaborates on how the...
- Homeserver - ESXi on HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10
After Hewlett Packard Enterprise has missed offering a Microserver in their 9th Generation, it is now back in Gen10. The Microserver series provides affordable servers intended to be used in SMB and as home servers. Due to its low price and …Read more »... - Fix for FreeNAS on HPE MicroServer Gen10 X3216 Stuck Console Issue
When you try to install FreeNAS 11 on the new HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 X3216, the installer stops booting and appears to be stuck at: pcib0: <ACPI Host-PCI bridge> port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0 pcib0: _OSC returned error 0x10 pci0: <ACPI PCI …Read more »... - Get- and Set-VMLatencySensitivity PowerShell Function
The Get-VMLatencySensitivity, Get-VMLatencySensitivityBulk and Set-VMLatencySensitivity PowerShell functions configure can return and set the latency sensitivity level of a virtual machine. You can adjust the latency sensitivity of a virtual machine to optimize the scheduling delay for latency sensi... - Critical Patch for All-Flash vSAN with Deduplication (6.0 and 6.5)
VMware has released a critical patch for vSAN 6.0 and 6.5. This patch contains a fix for a highly critical vSAN issue that might cause IO read errors and in some cases severe symptoms such as inaccessible VMs, host failures, or stuck resyncs. The issue …Read more »... - Get-VMHostVersion and Get-VMHostLatestVersion PowerShell Function
The Get-VMHostVersion and Get-VMHostLatestVersion PowerShell functions are aimed at helping you to identify the version at which your ESXi is currently running, and whether updates are available. Both are using a JSON based ESXi Build database which is also the backend …Read more »...
- Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.0
Vembu is a player in the backup and data protection world, maybe not (yet) well-know, but for sure not new at all and with a complete suite that covers the physical world, the virtual (VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V) and also some public cloud SaaS solutions. One of their product is the Vembu ... - Remove a VM from a vSphere vApp
Seems that the vSphere Web Client has some bugs, also with the latest vSphere 6.5 version. It should be the main web client (see a list of possible GUI clients in vSphere 6.5), but sometimes does not work as expected (without considering possible Flash bugs). If you are using vSphere vApp (feature t... - Meltdown and Spectre: are storage affected?
Meltdown and Spectre are critical vulnerabilities existing in several modern CPU: these hardware bugs allow programs to steal data which is currently processed on the computer. Meltdown and Spectre can affect personal computers, mobile devices, server and several cloud services. Actually, the only w... - VMware Integrated OpenStack 4.1
VMware has announced the general availability (GA) of VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO) 4.1. The new release is based on top of the Ocata release and support for the latest versions of VMware products, across vSphere, vSAN, and NSX V|T (including NSX-T LBaaSv2). OpenStack is a framework for pro... - Windows Server Insider Preview Build 17074: deduplication on ReFS!
Microsoft has just released to all Windows Insiders the new Windows Server Insider Preview Build 17074. This build is a preview build of the next Semi-Annual Channel release of Windows Server and it’s a preview of the next production build of Windows Server 2016… usually most of the feat...
DISCLAIMER
While I do my best to publish unbiased information specifically related to VMware solutions there is always the possibility of blog posts that are unrelated, competitive or potentially conflicting that may creep into the newsletter. I apologize for this in advance if I offend anyone and do my best to ensure this does not happen. Please get in touch if you feel any inappropriate material has been published. All information in this newsletter is copyright of the original author. If you are an author and wish to no longer be used in this newsletter please get in touch.
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