VMware Hot Topics – January

Hello again everyone! It’s a new year, and January is past us, so that means it’s time for another edition of the Altaro VMware Hot Topics Series!

For those that aren’t aware, this series focuses on interesting links, and useful how-tos from the VMware world, from the previous month. So, with that said, let’s dig right into all the cool VMware stuff from January!

1. Containers, Containers, Containers: Even in 2017?

Author: Alex Muetstege

Our first article for this month’s segment comes to us from the VMGuru blog. As I’m sure everyone has heard, containers were a big thing last year. As this article states “Docker was suddenly everyone. Containers were the new thing.” I fully agree with this statement. Many admins had never heard of docker, containers, or micro services prior to 2016, and as the year went on their benefits and use cases became much more clear, in all facets of the industry. If you’re looking for a run down on what containers are, where they come from, and how they fit into the VMware ecosystem, Alex Muetstege has put together this fantastic write up that is certainly worth a bit of your time.

2. Prepare Windows for vRA Software Deployment 

Author: Dimitri de Swart

Like Containers, 2016 seemed to be the year for enhancements and wide adoption of automation as well. Let’s face it, I think all of us could stand to benefit from a little automation in our organizations. Every time I talk about automation at events, I always point out that IT departments are being downsized, budgets are being slashed, and admins are being asked to do more now than ever. I would wager that most people would agree with that statement. With that said, we need to take advantage of every tool at our disposal in order to facilitate that automation, and vRealize Automation is one such tool. Another one from the VMGuru blog, Dimitri de Swart, put a nice howto on how to prepare Windows to work with vRA. Depending on your organization and current projects, this could be a nice time saver!

3. How to Disable DRS for a Single Host in the Cluster

Author: Duncan Epping

I found this one interesting as there have been rare cases where I’ve actually needed to do this. It can be useful to temporarily stop DRS type actions on a specific host, which we all know is a cluster-wide setting. Duncan Epping, takes us through the available options for achieving this goal, as there isn’t an official “off-switch” in the UI on a host by host basis. It’s on for the bookmarks roll for sure.

4. How to Add AD Authentication in vSphere 6.5

Author: Florian from Virten.net

I Always like to include one link in my monthly round-ups that is something of a “back-to-basics” type of post. The main reason being, is there are people that are still learning out there, and it’s always nice to have something of a refresher as well because for most of us, we’ve likely setup vCenter in our environments some time ago, and haven’t had to run through these steps any time recently.

5. Introducing VMware NSX 6.3

Author: VMware NSX Blog

VMware’s Software Defined Networking product has taken the industry by storm this last year. It seems like I can’t turn a page on the web without seeing some sort of mention of it, and/or an ad, or a webinar. Many businesses are starting to see the benefit of a software defined network stack, and while setting up SDN isn’t easy, VMware does indeed take a lot of the work out of it. This new version adds several different things such as the Application Rule Manager, which simplifies firewall rule creation, as well as enhancements for container environments amongst other things. If your interested, check out the link, it contains the full write-up on VMware’s NSX Blog.

6. Running the vSAN Witness Appliance in vCloud Air

Author: VMware StorageHub

Hyperconverged storage offerings are becoming more and more common. I would say from the people that I talk with in the industry, I run into it far more often now than a year ago. With more frequent adoption comes more complex use cases as well as more company try fitting the solution into their environments. One such use case would be that of stretch clusters. In order to facilitate that type of architecture, there has to be a centralized witness that is accessible by all locations. This document shows you how to do this using vCloud Air. While it’s not the most popular cloud platform on the market, I have found that many die-hard VMware shops are using it and have had good experiences with it.

Wrap-Up

Well that wraps things up for us this month! As always, if you know of a cool link or howto, that you feel should be in this list, feel free to share in the comments section below!

With that said, we’ll be back next month for another edition of VMware Hot Topics, so stay tuned!

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