vToolbelt – May 2022
Hot Topics
- vSphere 6.5 and 6.7 are heading into End of General Support in just a few months – October
15th, 2022. If your environment is still running these versions – now is the time to plan your upgrade. Check out this Upgrade Planning Guide to help you get started. - VMware Explore (VMworld renamed) is now open for registration. Learn more and Register
Upcoming Events
May VMware TAM Customer Webinar – Project Ensemble
Date: Thursday, May 12, 2022
Time: 11am EST
Missed a recent TAM Webinar? You can view the last 3 webinars in the archive
Indianapolis VMUG UserCon
June 29th, 2022
The Indianapolis VMUG/UserCon is one of the largest VMware events outside of VMworld/VMware Explore. For 2022 – this event is back live and in-person! For those in the western half of Ohio – or anyone looking to get to a live event – make sure you check this out!
VMware Explore
August 29 – September 1, 2022
In-Person at the Moscone Center
San Francisco, California
Same event – new name! VMworld has become VMware Explore!
There are a variety of ways to pay for a pass. You can use PSO Credits (24 credits per pass). You can also pay with a credit card and there are 2 early bird discount periods. Please refer to the link below for details.
Product Support Watch
The following products are nearing the End of General Support. You can find the full list on the VMware Lifecycle Product Matrix.
vSphere – vCenter and ESXi
- 6.5 – 10/15/22
- 6.7 – 10/15/22
Horizon View / Workspace ONE
- Dynamic Environment Manager 10/2006 – 8/11/22
- Dynamic Environment Manager 10/2009 – 10/15/22
- App Volumes 4 2006 – 7/9/22
- App Volumes 4 2009 – 10/15/22
- App Volumes 2.18 – 9/16/22
- Identity Manager 3.3.3 – 5/11/22
- Identity Manager 3.3.4 – 8/4/22
- Workspace ONE UEM Console 2011 – 7/22/22
- Workspace ONE UEM Console 2101 (SaaS) – 7/22/22
- Workspace ONE UEM Console 2102 – 10/14/22
- vRealize Operations Manager for Horizon 6.7 – 10/15/22
Networking
- HCX 4.1 – 6/15/22
- HCX 4.2 – 8/5/22
vRealize
- vRealize Automation 7.6 – 9/1/22
- vRealize Orchestrator 7.6 – 9/1/22
- vRealize Automation – 8/2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5 8.6 – 10/31/22
- vRealize Orchestrator – 8/2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5 8.6 – 10/31/22
- vRealize Lifecycle Manager 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6
- vRealize Operations 8.1.1 – 7/9/22
- Log Insight 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 – 10/31/22
- Network Insight – 6.0, 6.1 – 10/31/22
- vRealize Operations 8.1.1 – 7/9/22
- vRealize Operations 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5 – 10/31/22
Notes from the Field
If you aren’t familiar with the VMware Tech Zone, I recommend you take a few minutes and review the educational content. One recent addition is the vSphere 7 Upgrade Activity Path. This is a curated set of short learning sessions that will help you understand the upgrade processes. This is ideal for someone who hasn’t done this before. It can also serve as a good refresher for the more experienced engineer.
The TechZone also has a great section on getting started with Carbon Black.With all of the job and role changes going on, I thought I would share a checklist of items that I would recommend any new VMware Admin should do when starting out in a new position. This could be a useful check-up even if you haven’t made a career change.
- VMware Security Advisories – This is a mailing list with the sole purpose of announcing Security Vulnerabilities for VMware products. Sign up. Click the link, enter your email address in the upper right part of the page and hit enter.
- VMware Customer Connect – This is the VMware Portal you would use to manage license keys, download new product versions, and open support tickets. Make sure you can login and have access to your licenses. If you have trouble with this – please reach out!
- VMware Cloud Services Status Page – This page provides up to the minute status on everything from VMware Cloud on AWS, to Skyline, and even the Hands-On Labs
- VMware Hands-On Labs – Looking to learn more about a product? Check out the VMware Hands-On Labs.
- VMware Skyline – This is a proactive tool that can help identify solutions to problems before they affect your users. Check out this demo to learn more.
- VMUG Advantage – This is a low-cost way to get VMware licenses to use in a home lab to help you learn. It also comes with training discounts and access to VMware TestDrive
- The vSAN Deep Dive book has been updated for vSAN 7.0 U3
- vRealize Operations Dashboards made easy – this is a video series on how to get started making your own custom vROPs Dashboards
Booting ESX hosts from SD-Cards
On 4/27/22, VMware published updated guidance on using SD Cards. The short version is “VMware will continue supporting USB/SD card as a boot device through the 8.0 product release, including the update releases. Both installs and upgrades will be supported on USB/SD cards. The change from the previous guidance is that SD/USB as a standalone device will now be supported on previously certified server platforms”. KB 85685 has the full details. Migrating away from SD cards is still recommended.
- A TAM Customer webinar in December 2021 covered this extensively. If you were unable to attend the webinar live, you can watch the recording.
- A VMware engineer has written a blog article on how to move from booting ESX from SD-Cards to using locally attached SSDs.
- KB 83376 – discusses the issues that can arise when the SD card boot device has exhausted its write capability. This KB also describes a work around VMware has developed to allow low endurance SD Cards to work with vSphere 7 Update 2 and later. It involves a manual one-time config change which moves certain highly accessed files to a RAM Disk. vSphere 7.0 U3 automated this process.
- While this should help with vSphere 7.x, VMware guidance for future versions of vSphere is to move to higher performance/endurance boot devices in a future budget or your next hardware refresh plan.