In case you were wondering who makes Intel Xeon D based systems, wonder no more! Supermicro still has the most SKUs, but wow, what a diverse product line has sprung up in the roughly 15 months since the 4 to 16 core Xeon D variants began to ship in volume, joining the original 8 core Xeon D-1540.…
If you've read TinkerTry for a while, you'll know I've enjoyed relying on Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE, right through version 1.5, to protect multiple physical PCs in my family. Several times a year, I'll do a full restore of important PCs to a VM, to be absolutely sure my backups are good.…
This article is a work in progress, more photos to be added soon. That's a lot of hi-res pics, glad I have KeyCDN ready for you! Had a great time at VeeamON 2017 in New Orleans, meeting many virtualization experts and bloggers for the first time. Oh, and I learned stuff too! There were also so many…
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…
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…
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…
Veeam certainly seems to be very good at attracting talent with a penchant for highly valuable newsletters. You may recall my piece about the always-amazing Anton Gostev: There's one weekly newsletter that any VMware or Hyper-V professional will enjoy, already has 35,218 subscribers Oct 13 2015 …
Recall that VMware vSphere 6.5 was announced on Oct 18, but released on Nov 15, 2016. By November 30th, NAKIVO let us know their stance on support for 6.5: Full vSphere 6.5 support will be available in Q1 2017, however, we may have some limited support till the end of this year. information that I…
Veeam Vanguard Definition: At VMware's Tech Summit in Las Vegas's fake Venice, Feb 01 2017. Happened to have an appropriate shirt for hunting down fellow Vanguard John Nicholson. These individuals have been nominated as Veeam Vanguards. A Veeam Vanguard represents our brand to the highest level in…
This article is a starting point for you, the proud Supermicro Superserver Xeon D system owner! For virtualization enthusiasts with a SuperServer Xeon D This article will help you enjoy an even smoother ownership experience. VMware ESXi 6.5 runs well on Xeon D Supermicro ServerServers, here's what…
SDDC - Software-Defined Datacenter. Source. Zack Widing, Federal Sr. Systems Engineer at VMware. When the picture above first emerged on Twitter back on December 6th, my reaction was a mix of wonder and joy, with a touch of jelly. This Zack Widing @zCloudtech has taken the Xeon D platform and run…
I was recently in touch with a VMware contact about the issue with VMUG Advantage's aging code, not offering folks the latest vSphere 6.5 version released on Nov 15, 2016. It appears that problem has now been solved, announced today actually, have a look! Out with the old (now broken) URL: …
FlightAware.com composite map, Dec 08 2016. I'm flying with this home datacenter tomorrow, to present at my 14th user group presentation this year. This time, it's to one of the biggest VMware User Groups in the US, over in Minneapolis Minnesota! OK, I'm not actually trying to fly with that UPS…
Let's start with Cormac Hogan's recent post: Announcing vSphere 6.5 Core Storage white paper Nov 28 2016 by Cormac Hogan at VMware | Blogs > Virtual Blocks I’m delighted to announce the availability of a new vSphere 6.5 core storage white paper. The paper covers new features such as VMFS-6…
Introduction Such adapter cards pass signals from your M.2 NVMe device right through to your motherboards PCIe slot, with no speed degradation. You can see these simple wire traces in the close-look video that's featured below, so there's no special drivers needed. Modern PCs and servers simply…
There have been many reports of issues with these 960 drives! Please read: Samsung 960 PRO/EVO/SM961/PM961 M.2 NVMe SSD disappearance workaround is to power cycle, boot from NVMe problems also reported Original article appears below. This will likely be my last manual update of order status. As…
The Java-based iKVM is not long for this world. The remaining IPMI bugs, along with many Supermicro owners not able to upgrade to IPMI 3.3.x or later, mean that not everybody is able to move to HTML5, see also my recent: How to map a network share to boot from ISO, moving Supermicro Java iKVM to…
Here's highlights of Veeam's recent announcement that I received from Clint Wyckoff (@ClintWyckoff), Product Strategy Evangelist at Veeam: As you probably know, we’ve recently announced a number of features of Veeam Availability Suite 9.5. Today, I’m happy to announce that version 9.5 is here!…
This is one of those simple tips that I think Supermicro SuperServer owners will really appreciate. You will need to have a Supermicro system / X10SDV motherboard that is capable of running IPMI 3.3.x, or later. This includes all Xeon D systems that Supermicro makes, which are now at 3.46. If…
The install of ESXi 6.5 is just as easy as the install of all ESXi 6.0.x versions before it. Given the 7 year product life design of this powerful and efficient Intel SoC (System on a chip) targetted at virtualization workloads, I expected no less. I have a video below that goes through the simple…
Last night, I was recording a nifty ESXi 6.5 install video using a Windows 10 system that was running on some older hardware. That was a mistake, it bogged down right when I needed it, live on camera. Oh well, time to migrate this VM to another system as I prepare for round 2, the VCSA install. The…
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.
Patronage | SuperServer Order Page
Detailed Intel Xeon D and NUC specs at: TinkerTry.com/compare
