VeeamON 2017 - Availability Suite v10 announced featuring backup of NASs and built-in Management for new Veeam Agent for Windows v2, unifying VM & PC backups

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.…

May 31 2017

The VeeamON 2017 Experience

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…

May 26 2017

New Supermicro BIOS 1.2 and (under validation) IPMI 3.52 for Xeon D SuperServers released Spring 2017

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…

May 2 2017

VMUG Advantage just added the latest NSX 6.3.1 and All Flash vSAN 6.6 bits to EVALExperience, great for vSphere home labs, just $200 a year!

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…

May 1 2017

How to import your VCSA certificate so ALL VMware vSphere browser security warnings go away in Windows 10

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 …

Apr 26 2017

How to fix inaccurate Xeon D Hardware Health sensor readings on VMware ESXi 6.5.x, since sfcbd CIM service is off by default

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…

Apr 23 2017

NAKIVO Backup & Replication v7 released with full VMware vSphere 6.5 support

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…

Mar 28 2017

VMware vSphere Taskbar Shortcuts Unleashed - profile switcher isolated and uncluttered Chrome Browser UIs act like native Windows apps!

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…

Mar 27 2017

Notes from MWhite - another great newsletter for IT Pros

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 …

Mar 4 2017

NAKIVO Backup & Replication v7 Beta offers full vSphere 6.5 support

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…

Feb 7 2017

Veeam Vanguard 2017 announced, 3rd year with TinkerTry friends!

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…

Feb 2 2017

Articles about installing VMware vSphere 6.5 on your TinkerTry'd Supermicro SuperServer Bundle Xeon D

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…

Jan 25 2017

The Portable Software-Defined Datacenter by Zack Widing, VMware vSAN cluster features 4 Xeon D Supermicro SuperServers

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…

Dec 23 2016

VMUG Advantage features EVALExperience, now with the latest VMware vSphere 6.5 inside!

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: …

Dec 21 2016

The Xeon D Supermicro SuperServer "Bundle 2" of joy, a complete home datacenter virtualization solution that really flies

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…

Dec 7 2016

vSphere 6.5 Core Storage white paper - one home virtualization lab enthusiast's perspective

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 e…

Dec 7 2016

M.2 expansion for your NVMe SSDs - EZDIY adds, Angelbird Wings adds and cools, Amfeltec Squid adds, cools, and quadruples

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…

Dec 6 2016

Where to buy your Samsung 960 EVO or PRO M.2 NVMe SSDs, featuring the latest ordering and availability info

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…

Nov 30 2016

How to remap F2 in Supermicro iKVM Remote Console to get to VMware ESXi "Customize System/View Logs"

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…

Nov 25 2016

Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 NFR license now available to certified IT Pros, vSphere 6.5 support coming soon

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! I hig…

Nov 22 2016

How to map a network share to boot from ISO, moving Supermicro Java iKVM to browser-only HTML5 iKVM

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…

Nov 22 2016

VMware ESXi 6.5 runs well on Xeon D Supermicro ServerServers, here's what you need to know

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…

Nov 18 2016

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 6.1.1 works with ESXi 6.5, virtualizing Windows PCs & VMs for free

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…

Nov 16 2016

Supermicro SuperServer Xeon D / X10SDV IPMI Release Notes Changelog

Looking for just the latest release notes? Jump below. Looking for the October 2016 IPMI 3.46 release, still the currently support release? Jump over to this detailed article. Looking for the March 2017 IPMI 3.52 release? Jump to this detailed article. Looking for the June 2017 IPMI 3.58 release? I…

Nov 7 2016