Working in hotels with your laptop can be a pain, sometimes literally. I mean really working, and producing content. Here's just some of the issues commonly noticed when traveling for work like I do: no secondary display, man do I miss having one way-too-high desktop to type comfortably on…
Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows Compare Editions, Download, Release Notes, and User Guide. I've been kicking the tires these last few weeks on Veeam's latest free backup offering for physical systems, using a Dell Precision 5510, and my Xeon D SuperServer. It's going quite well, with numerous…
Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows Compare Editions, Download, Release Notes, and User Guide. WannaCry Outcry This week ransomware got even nastier, with a new levels of proliferation. Being around a bunch of storage and availability experts this upcoming week at VeeamON is great timing, should…
See veeam.com/veeamon. I'll be an attendee at VeeamON 2017 in New Orleans this week, with about 2,000 other IT Pros. I'm honored to be going as a Veeam Vanguard, ready to learn, socialize, blog, and enjoy the remarkable keynote speakers: Sanjay Poonen Chief Operating Officer, Customer Operations,…
Looking to ignore release notes and disclaimers/warnings to get right to the downloads and detailed upgrade procedures? Jump below. I've now TinkerTry'd both of these releases. Preliminary, they seem to work well with my ESXi 6.5.0d, and my Samsung 960 EVO M.2 NVMe 1TB and Samsung 960 PRO M.2 NVMe…
I've been a big fan of the EVALExperience offering from the good folks at the VMware User Group organization for years. It's just one of the many benefits of subscribing to VMUG Advantage, and is worth far more than the $200 it costs online, or $180 at your friendly neighborhood VMUG UserCon, as…
Trying to go here: www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools.html or here: www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/overview.html to get to the direct download URL here: ssd.samsungsemi.com/ecomobile/ssd/update14.do?fname=/Samsung_SSD_960_PRO_2B6QCXP7.iso for the latest…
You can free up tons of vertical real-estate when doing your day-to-day vSphere sysadmin by hiding the URLs and tabs and dead space in Chrome, see: VMware vSphere Taskbar Shortcuts Unleashed - profile switcher isolated and uncluttered Chrome Browser UIs act like native Windows apps! Mar 27 2017 …
Backstory See, everything is very healthy, ESXi 6.0 or 6.5! Back during the early test period of VMware's ESXi 6.5, I had inquired with VMware about a problem I had noticed on my Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5028D-TN4T 8 Core Bundle 2, featuring Xeon D-1541. You see, with 6.0, all VMware GUIs would…
VMware ESXI 6.5.0d Release Notes ESXi 6.5.0d | 18 APRIL 2017 | ISO Build 5310538 Warning: vCenter/VCSA 6.5 should be upgraded to 6.5.0d before upgrading your host(s) to ESXi 6.5.0d Build 5310538, see: How to easily update your VMware vCenter Server Appliance from VCSA 6.5 to 6.5.0d Feb 07 2017 I…
VMware vCenter Server 6.5.0d Release Notes vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.0d | 18 APRIL 2017 | ISO Build 5318154 Warning: vCenter/VCSA 6.5 should be upgraded to 6.5.0d (aka 6.5 b) before upgrading your host(s) to ESXi 6.5.0d. There's a huge benefit to 6.5.0d, it introduces vSAN 6.6! See also: vSAN…
Just 6 months after vSAN 6.5! VMware vSAN 6.6 Release Notes VMware vSAN 6.6 | 18 April 2017 | ISO Build 5310538 Check for additions and updates to these release notes. This vSAN release is a big deal, with so many improvements. Behind the scenes, I've been working on NVMe pass through ideas for…
The more of us out there using ESXi 6.5 on Xeon D, the better! See also William Lam's Project USB to SDDC – Part 1 and Part 2. Xeon D's M.2 NVMe, IPMI, 4 NICs (2 of them 10GbE!), and 128GB of RAM certainly makes for some interesting possibilities. More of my thoughts to be added right to this…
The more of us out there using ESXi 6.5 on Xeon D, the better! Recently, there have been some more virtualization enthusiasts writing up their positive experiences with Xeon D. William Lam mentioned Xeon D back in Febuary, and Tai Ratcliff's had a recent look at SuperMicro vs Intel NUC. Xeon D's…
AMD's recent release of an entirely new CPU family that claims to be a true Intel competitor is big news. It's been many years since we've had a splash from AMD, which is part of why there's been considerable excitement about AMD Ryzen™ and The "Zen" Core Architecture built with AMD…
Introduction If you're looking for a deep dive into the history of consumer and enterprise SSDs that stretches back about 9 years now, right through to today's NVMe and 3D XPoint (which Intel calls Optane and Micron calls QuantX), and tomorrow's NVDIMMs, then you're in the right place! This audio I…
Let's keep this recent story in perspective, some excerpts below, but you should read the whole article: The Security Landscape: Pwn2Own 2017 ...two teams succeeded in demonstrating arbitrary host code execution on VMware Workstation. Today, VMware is releasing updated versions of VMware vSphere…
Trains and food La Bonne Soupe Thanks to the the extreme hospitality of NYC VMUG Leader Ariel, I was able to enjoy a wonderful dinner with a friend right in NYC, the night before last week's VMUG. Turns out that temperatures in mid 30s (Fahrenheit), coupled with 20-30 mph sustained winds makes…
Mar 29 2017 Update - New full install/configure demo video! Those backup speeds for handling a Windows 10 Creators Update full VM backup [35GB VMDK] are pretty incredible. The VM and the backup repository are located on an M.2 NVMe SSD. Recall that VMware vSphere 6.5 was announced on Oct 18, but…
It's no secret that VMware is moving away from the Windows/C#-based vSphere Client and the Adobe Flash-based vSphere Web Client over to an HTML5/JavaScript combo that is far faster, and much more universal. These web UIs arrived in the form of the VMware Host Client (source) that's baked right in…
Image from "Applying Intel® Optane™ SSDs to MySQL- Part 1: Fast Storage" by Ken LeTourneau at Intel. Allyn Malventano discusses 3D XPoint technology and Optane implementation on PC Perspective podcast 442, Mar. 23 2017. Last week was big for journalists, attending Intel's closed…
VMware vCenter Server 6.5.0b Release Notes | 14 MARCH 2017 | ISO Build 5178943 Warning: vCenter/VCSA 6.5 should be upgraded to 6.5.0b (aka 6.5 b) before upgrading your host(s) to ESXi 6.5.0a, which is still the latest ESXi version by the way. There's a nice benefit to 6.5.0b, see also the closely…
Pricing subject to change depending upon the airport pair chosen, and the weekday chosen. This is just one example. I recently had a two days of back-to-back business commitments where the only viable way to get from the my hometown airport BDL (Hartford CT) to PIT (Pittsburgh PA) was a late…
New podcast episode announced here: Jim Collison https://twitter.com/jcollison was joined by Paul Braren from https://TinkerTry.com for show #299 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network. It's been about 9 months since I've had the opportunity to be on Jim's show, and we…
TinkerTry - Sensible datacenter technology in the IT Pro's home. My opinions here, not my employer's.
Paul Braren, VCP-DCV, vExpert 2014/15/16/17.
Veeam Vanguard 2015/16/17.
