And just like that, we are heading into the home stretch of January!  When I began

writing this newsletter when we had 4-5 inches of white stuff on the ground.  I can happily report that now that I’ve published the article – the snow is gone.  However, I am writing this in Ohio, so by the time you are reading this we probably have another inch or so…

Upcoming Events

Toledo Q1 VMUG (3/7) – This is for those of you in the Northwest part of Ohio. The Toledo VMUG is meeting again!  This event is Wednesday, March 7th from 11:30am-1:30pm.  Lunch will be provided. VMware Staff Engineer Tom Zukowski will be presenting on NSX.  Get more information and register here.

OARnet / VMware Education Day (3/27) – OARnet and VMware invite you to a free educational event at the Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Center in Columbus, Ohio on March 27th.  There will be education tracks along a number of topics (Cloud, Automation, Security and more!)  Sign up today!  View the agenda and register.

Central Ohio VMUG UserCON (4/3) – Save the date, and plan to be at the Convention Center in Columbus on April 4 for one of the largest VMUG events in the mid-west!   The agenda hasn’t been released yet; but watch the VMUG UserCon page for news!  I will post an update once I hear the registration page is up.

VMworld 2018

• VMworld US returns to Las Vegas on August 26-30th 2018
• VMworld Europe will be back in Barcelona from November 5-8th 2018

Product Update

vSphere 5.5 End of Life – September 19^th, 2018 – This version of vCenter and vSphere ESXi reaches its End of General Support phase.  The products will continue to operate after this date; but will no longer have telephone support available.   Refer to the VMware Knowledge Base for more information – KB51491

Notes from the Field

NSX 6.4 – The latest version of NSX (6.4) was released recently.  There are a huge number of features and improvements in this release.   Some other NSX-releated news you might like:

• New NSX Troubleshooting Guide (6.4)
• Demo of the Context-Aware Firewall, Enhancements to the Application Rule Manager.
• Enhanced NSX Modules for Ansible
• Free PDF of the new book – Building VMware NSX Powered Clouds and Data Centers for Small and Medium Businesses
• New Powershell module for managing vRealize Network Insight – Introducing PowervRNI
• The NSX Manager has backup & restore functionality.  Learn how to restore the Edge Gateway 
• Using Docker to perform the initial virtual machine deployment and NSX Config

vSphere – For those of you who are still getting up to speed on vSphere 6.5, take a few minutes to watch or listen to this VMware Community Roundtable Podcast on key insights to vSphere 6.5.   In other vSphere news:

• vSphere 6.5 Update 1d includes the Third Update to the HTML5 vSphere Client
• Goodbye vSphere Web Client – That’s right!  the Flash-based vSphere Web Client will be deprecated with the next numbered release of vSphere.  Note:  This isn’t the next update but the next numbered release after 6.5.  Get the details here.
• New VMware Labs Fling – Bulk migrate VMs to a new vCenter with the Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility
• Should you have a need to disable TLS 1.0 across the core vSphere components – take a look at the vSphere TLS Reconfigure Utility
• If you are considering VM Encryption, check out this new white paper by VMware’s Mike Foley
• Learn about more detail about how VMware DRS and how it manages Memory Load Balancing
• Many are interesting in how VMware Tools can be deployed and managed using SCCM.  VMware now has a guide for just that!
• Running 10gb networks for your IP Storage?  You might be interested in some updates to the ESX IP Storage Troubleshooting Best Practices guide.
• Did you know you can enable service advisories from the VMware Portal?  Learn how

vSAN – Since vSAN is configured at a cluster level, you might be wondering what would happen if you needed to replace your vCenter.  Read on to learn how to replace vCenter that has existing vSAN hosts.  A few other tidbits you might find interesting:

• Can you use a custom TCP/IP stack for the vSAN network
• One new addition to vSAN in vSphere 6.5 Patch 02 can bring your vSAN cluster back to storage policy compliance faster.  Learn about vSAN Adaptive Resync
• In that same patch the vSAN Storage Performance Proactive Test changed a bit

Horizon

• Updated Horizon 7 Network Ports guide
• Horizon 7.4 introduced User Session Collaboration.  Learn how this can allow your users to work together
• Are you still Group Policy to manage your VDI environment?  Learn how VMware User Environment Manager can help speed up the user experience and make administration easier for you!

PowerCLI

• If you haven’t started using PowerCLI, or are still getting comfortable with it, take look at this Getting Started with PowerCLI series
• Did you know you can use PowerCLI to manage VMware Tools?
• Free PowerShell Training Resources

If it is still too cold and dreary to go outside, take a few minutes and catch some of the Virtualization Industry players on TechConfessions the Show