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…
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 …
Backstory - M.2 NVMe arrives in 2015 I began talking about NVMe back in 2014, with over a thousand mentions since. It's been a big deal for the home lab/home datacenter, working particular well with VMware's ESXi hypervisor on Xeon D, blessed with full-speed PCIe 3.0 x 4 in that tiny M.2 form…
It's a nice thing, when one of the many of SuperServer owners take a chunk of their time to share their experience buying a TinkerTry'd Bundle from Wiredzone, ready for virtualization. It's really a Xeon D success story, with 8 cores and 128GB of RAM, able to handle a lot of VMs. Chestin includes a…
In 2016, I spoke publicly 15 different times! TinkerTravels 2016 - More than a dozen technical demonstrations at a variety of user groups and conferences Before now, there was never a super easy way to find this information, at any time. Now this page is just one click away from anywhere at…
The Problem I recently had to turn in an old laptop that I sometimes used with my bootable 2.5" Samsung 850 EVO 2TB SSD. Uh oh, now I have a few weeks to wait for a new system, meanwhile, how do I get stuff done? Sure I had my superfast SuperServer Workstation that I sometimes use this SSD in,…
If you have a Dell Precision laptop with up to a 1TB Toshiba M.2 NVMe SSD inside, congratulations, you have quite a nice workstation! This "corporate" laptop is blessed with a 4K display, and that envy-inducing thin bezel. A close cousin of the popular and highly rated Dell XPS 15 that a…
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…
VMware Release Notes for vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.0a | 02 FEB 2017 | Build 4944578 Warning: vCenter/VCSA 6.5 should be upgraded to 6.5.0a before upgrading your host(s) to ESXi 6.5.0a! Once in a while, things are easy. One of the selling points of making the big move from vCenter+Windows to…
VMware Release Notes for ESXi 6.5.0a | 02 FEB 2017 | ISO Build 4887370 What's New This release of ESXi 6.5.0a adds support for NSX 6.3.0. This release also delivers a bug fix that has been documented in the Resolved Issues section. As seen at bottom-right of the screenshot above, vSAN fixes too! …
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…
Introduction I'm pleased to present you with the result of a massive installation and documentation effort by a TinkerTry fan. This voluntary article was authored by Greater Detroit's Steve Shanks, who is currently a Senior Consultant at The Speedware Company. He volunteered to help speed folks…
Introduction I'm pleased to present you with the result of a massive installation and documentation effort by a TinkerTry fan. This voluntary article was authored by Greater Detroit's Steve Shanks, who is currently a Senior Consultant at The Speedware Company. He volunteered to help speed folks…
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…
Dear TinkerTry Readers: Today, January 9th of 2017, is my very first day at VMware. As a Commercial Systems Engineer, my role will include demonstrating the benefits of a Software Defined Storage strategy, specifically focusing on vSAN for eastern US customers. My region is the Eastern US, with a…
It sure took a while, but the first Samsung 960 PRO and EVO shipments to US customers finally arrived the third week of December, that long saga unfolded here. So far, it's looking good! But why should only I have all the fun, as I performed my first set of confidence-building tests. I wanted to…
This article has had several significant additions since initially published, to incorporate new findings from amazingly helpful readers who commented below, including a new 960 EVO firmware 2B7QCXE7 that seems to have solved the issue for me on Jan 29 2017, no word on 960 PRO yet. I'm apparently…
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite Available at Amazon, B&H, and Newegg for under $90 USD. Which EdgeRouters? There are other members of the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter family that use this same v1.9.1 firmware, so this article likely applies to those folks as well, including: ERLite-3 and ERPoe-5 ER-8,…
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
