Taken from https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere

It’s no surprise that VMware vSphere 6.7 was just released. Hot on the heels of this release was vSphere 6.5U2. If you’re like me, sometimes it is difficult to stay on top of the latest blogs when new releases hit unless you’re polling Twitter daily. To help us all stay in the know, this post will serve as an aggregated list of blogs related to the release of vSphere / vSAN / vRealize Operations 6.7 and vSphere 6.5U2. You’ll also find other product releases have dropped in under the radar such as vRealize Automation 7.4, SRM and vSphere Replication 8.1, vRealize Business for Cloud 7.4, and Log Insight 4.6.

Make yourself a fresh cup of java, and get ready to learn about what’s new and exciting in the VMware world. And if you’re a vExpert who has blogged about a feature of one of these new products, please reach out so I can add your blog post to the list.

Read the full list here - http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2018/05/05/an-aggregation-of-vsphere-6-7-and-other-product-release-blogs.

If you follow VMware technologies or want to see what's new and exciting, I recommend attending vForum Online starting today at 11:30 AM Central. You can RSVP and view the agenda by following that link.

I recommend the "What's New" sessions and the "Chat with Experts" sessions. Those are the ones I found most valuable as a customer.

Perhaps you’ve heard some buzz about Wavefront but don’t quite know what it is or how it can be used. I was in the same boat for a while, but then I saw a demo that blew my mind. Imagine a platform that could ingest time series data (or metrics) from various sources, retain all data points with no roll up, and allowed IT operations and developers to quickly analyze the data for spotting and visualizing trends affecting application performance. How could we use that data to make the business better, and what kind of data actually gets collected? Moreover, how and why are people using this tool? I hope this post will provide some answers.

Wavefront Integration with Google Cloud Platform
The Wavefront website shows a number of integrations, but what does that really mean? Wavefront has pre-built methods for metric collection from certain applications and will guide you through the setup process. There are other ways to get data into Wavefront, but integrations make the process easier.

I happen to have a Google Compute Engine instance running a single Linux virtual machine, so it made sense to play with the Google Cloud Platform integration. This blog post gives some detail on the GCP integration, but once I read it, I wanted to see it for myself. Sign up for a free 30-day trial of Wavefront and a free year of GCP to follow along.

The rest of the story can be found here - http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2018/04/14/catch-the-wave-with-gcp-a-wavefront-integration-exploration/.

@coliver said in DFW SpiceCorps - 4/19/2018:

This sounds like it is going to be a good one.

Agreed - now if I could just get more people to sign up and show up....

Date: Thursday, April 19, 2018
Time: 6:30pm - 10:00 PM CDT
Location:
Holiday Inn Las Colinas
110 W John Carpenter Fwy
Irving, TX 75039

Spring is in the air, and it is time for another SpiceCorps meeting. If you like to talk technology, enjoy free refreshments, and want to meet your peers in the industry, come nerd out with us! This meeting is the result of a topic suggestion from our February meeting. Here's what we will cover:

Imaging 101 for the IT Pro

Is workstation imaging the bane of your existence? Is it as simple as pushing out a golden image to a new machine when onboarding employees, or are there other ways to approach the imaging process? Should everything just be scripted? How can we make image management easier and deployment faster for administrators? What about dealing with different hardware, a changing set of applications for end users, and multiple operating systems? How can we image at scale without needing to scale the department? We'll discuss different imaging methodologies and have plenty of time for questions.

Kudos to our very own ITGamer for securing a venue and volunteering to give a talk. Light refreshments will be provided. We hope to see you there!

RSVP here - https://community.spiceworks.com/meeting/show/2671

In the end, it is about what can help your business meet its RPO and RTO. That is going to determine the budget.

Be careful of trying brownfield VMware vSAN. The vSAN HCL is something you must adhere to when choosing hardware to use to set yourself up for success (i.e. controller is super important - look at the HBA330 instead of a PERC, need to choose the proper drives for cache and capacity, etc.).

So if you do roll with VMware vSAN or use Starwind, I would still look at a DR cluster. You can do a 2-node vSAN cluster but need a witness running somewhere else.

I'm be praying for his family. He helped me a number of times and was one super smart, super helpful dude.

Picture yourself in front of a rack of VxRail appliances. Ah, the bright shine of freshly racked and cabled new gear! The network team has VLANs ready. The operations team has picked out naming conventions for host names and virtual machines. Storage capacity will be more than enough to support growth efforts for the next year. It’s finally time to dive into the hyper-converged infrastructure pool of goodness.

Before jumping in, consider the tools used for cluster management in the VxRail world. VxRail Manager (a virtual machine within the cluster) is the secret sauce for lifecycle management, and vCenter is the tool for day-to-day operations. But is deploying VxRail really as easy as stepping through the setup wizard and taking a lunch break? It certainly can be, but don’t let vCenter derail the success of your VxRail deployment. This, my friends, is where our tale begins.

You can read the rest of the story here - http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2018/03/31/a-tale-of-two-vcenters-vxrail-edition/.

I'm a little late on this, but it's not too late to register for the VMUG Virtual Event today (started about 40 minutes ago). The full agenda is here - https://www.vmug.com/Attend/VMUG-UserCon/VirtualEvent. Take advantage of things like Meet the Expert if you have burning questions.

I think you will begin to hear more about Workspace ONE powered by Airwatch rather than Airwatch as a separate product (https://www.vmware.com/products/workspace-one.html). There's a large amount of work being done around managing Windows 10 devices too (moving to Unified Endpoint Management instead of just traditional MDM, things like ability to manage BitLocker keys).

There were some platform announcements yesterday as well - https://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2018/03/workspace-one-intelligence-march-announcement.html.

But I'd stick with @StorageNinja's advice on being patient for a response.

I have seen so many people do SQL Server wrong, and then they end up throwing hardware at the problem when it was designed wrong in the first place.

take the mystery out of the equation. Make a suggestion that someone run LiveOptics on your current environment(s) to see how they are performing at peak. You can base your recommendation on that and let the numbers speak for themselves in regard to database size and RAM usage.

Make sure if you do backup the SQL databases and restore that the security gets backed up and restored as well. I've seen instances where a database was restored along with security permissions on the database, but there were no SQL logins created on the target instance to map to the restored database permissions.

If you haven't signed up for the free DFW VMUG meeting this Friday (3/23), it's a great opportunity to network with peers about virtualization and technology trends, get free food, and speak with different industry vendors.  Additionally, a number of VMware employees tend to come.

The vendor sponsors this time are Reduxio, Datrium, and Trend Micro. The full agenda and registration link can be found here.  I hope to see you there!

A recent discussion with a friend inspired this post.

Whether you are a workaholic, forced to work overtime each week, or never take work home, when is the last time you stopped to reflect on career? It seems to be something many of us consistently overlook. Working on career progression through an iterative, routine process is key for self-development. But when is the last time you thought about it?

Regardless of job or employer, you are capable of greater things. I’m not saying you should be job hunting. I’m saying you should be constantly seeking to improve. How do you get started? Here are some suggestions to get the juices flowing:

• Set aside some time to think in a distraction free environment. No matter how busy you think you are, just do it. Start with 15 minutes per day. Continue daily until a full evaluation of your current career state has been captured.

• Though it is not required, put your thoughts in writing (stored electronically, backed up in 3 places, not on your work computer, etc.). It will help you remember and will direct your next steps on the career progression journey.

You can read the rest of the story here - http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2018/02/22/get-crafty-with-career-progression.

I'm looking forward to seeing anyone here who can make it tonight.

My initial thought was try re-configuring HA on the host.

What versions of vCenter and vSphere are you running?

Imagine having just configured some LUNs on your new PowerVault MD3820i. Encryption key management has been configured, and 20 SEDs (self-encrypting drives) are spinning and ready for use with vSphere. There are 4 SSDs in the PowerVault to use for caching that just need to be configured.

“What do you mean these cache disks aren’t supported for use with SEDs?” That was the question posed to Dell Support after being told we could not add cache disks for our SED LUNs in this array.

The SSDs were in the PowerVault, and the device recognized them without an issue. We just couldn’t configure them as cache. Even the documentation from Dell mentioned this configuration is not supported. As it turns out, the SSDs we received were not SEDs and could not be used as cache in combination with SEDs.

While the SAN with SEDs would meet the corporate encryption requirements, losing caching capabilities meant the storage would no longer meet our IOPs needs. And that is where our story begins.

You can read the rest here - http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2018/01/28/journey-to-vsan-a-technical-adventure.

@dafyre said in Getting rid of Group text as a means of calling out.:

There's always email, lol.

Why not create a PTO calendar and have folks put their PTO days on it? It could even be a resource mailbox. So send a meeting to the mailbox and all members of the team that need to know. Historical tracking of any and all PTO can be done by checking the resource mailbox's calendar. Simple.