February has been quite a busy month with VMware Virtualization news!  Grab a cup of  coffee and dig in!

Networking

NSX 6.3 is out!  This includes support for vSphere 6.5 (specifically 6.5a).  Some key new features include the Application Rule Manager, Endpoint Monitoring, Multi-Datacenter Security Tagging, and the beginnings of multi-hypervisor support with NSX-T. Read more here.

NSX Support Insider – Get trending NSX Support issues right in your RSS Feed Reader  – http://feeds.feedburner.com/NSX

VMware has released a free e-book called NSX Micro-segmentation Day 1.  This is a “concise book that provides the necessary information to guide organizations interested in bolstering their security posture through the implementation of micro-segmentation”.

One of Ohio’s own NSX experts (Ron Fuller – NSX SE) has co-authored a book called VMware NSX for vSphere Essentials. This book is available for Pre-Order.

The University of New Hampshire improves security and compliance by adopting a zero-trust security model and implementing NSX (Whitepaper | Video).

vSAN

A lot of you have been asking questions about vSAN (which is great by the way – ask away!).    Here are some some quick educational resources to help (vSAN Whiteboard, vSAN Business Case).

When you want to start planning a deployment, take a look at these Design Considerations.

You probably read that with vSAN 6.5 – every edition gets all-flash!  What if you are still on vSAN 6.2 – can you run all-flash too?  Why yes you can!  There is a license for that.

If you have vRealize Operations – there is a vSAN management pack you need to check out.

PowerCLI

Maybe you don’t run Windows, so you have never really looked at PowerCLI.  Did you know you can run PowerCLI from Linux, Mac, and Docker?  Check out PowerCLI Core.

Do you want a lab (at home or in the office) but don’t relish the tedious setup?  Take a look at what the @VMwareCode guys came up with – PowerCLI script to automate the build of a vSphere 6.5 lab.

Horizon View

You really need to check out what PowerCLI can do to help you manage your View environment.  Scripting can help save time!

Whether you are just looking into your first View environment, or have it already setup – check out the Top 10 tips for a Successful Horizon VDI.

Are you having problems with slow user logins on Horizon?  Are you still using Group Policy to manage those users and desktops?  User Environment Manager can help!

Flings

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, you know what a proponent I am for VMware Flings.  Here are some updates you might be interested in.

• The HTML 5 vSphere client keeps getting updated!
• Have you ever been on a support ticket where you needed to produce a full memory dump from a VM?  How many times did that Windows server not cooperate (and work perfectly while the ticket was open?)  You can now suspend the VM and use VMSS2Core to get the dump.
• Nervous about upgrading to vSphere 6.5?  Run the VMware vSphere Compatibility Predictor to review your environment.

vSphere

If you use Veeam, they just released a new version which has vSphere 6.5 support.

Have you ever connected to an ESXi host with SSH and felt lost?  (it’s okay to admit you don’t know the command-line).  Do you remember the yellow and black character-based GUI that you use when at the host console?  That’s the DCUI.  If you are running vSphere 6 or later – you can run the DCUI from SSH!

We get a lot of questions about why DRS places a VM on a certain host, or vMotions at a specific time.  This blog sets the record straight on workload placement.

When you begin to upgrade your ESXi hosts to 6.5, you may see warnings about incompatibilities.  These issues might be related to a third-part module (or VIB) that has been installed on your host.  You can fix this quite easily.

The vCenter Server in 6.5 has a lot of new features.  One of those is the ability to do file-based backups/restores.  You can find a walkthrough of that feature here.  VMware actually has a site for walkthroughs of the majority of their products.

Do you need to virtualize your Oracle databases?  Check out this one-stop shop for Oracle-VMware documentation.

If you have ever faced the ESXi Purple Screen of Death – you know how frustrating it can be.  You might consider using the ESXi Dump Collector to send those core dumps to a network server.  This will make the process of collecting a dump much easier, as well as get your issue fixed much faster.

Whew!  That was quite a bit.  I hope there are a few good bits that you will deem worthy of a spot in your Virtual ToolBelt.