vSphere 7 – What’s New?

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vSphere 7Today VMware is announcing the long awaited release of vSphere 7.  There was a lot of talk about it at VMworld 2019.  It was mentioned in various sessions but there were no official announcements.  It only took a few more months of waiting!  The official announcement is today, March 10th, 2020 with a release date sometime in April I’ve been told.  With vSphere 6.0 going End of General Support this week the new version can’t come soon enough.

Due to my recently renewed vExpert status, I was lucky enough to sit on several NDA briefings over the last two weeks.  The first of which I’ll be talking about here, was focused on Compute.  That basically encompasses the base vSphere products of ESXi and vCenter and the new features and capabilities in vSphere 7.  Let’s dig in and see what this is all about! Continue reading →

vExpert 2020 Awarded!

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vExpert 2020It’s that time of year again!  vExpert 2020 time!  I know I was patiently waiting to see if I was fortunate enough to make the cut this year.  By that I mean spam checking email, Twitter and the vExpert blog.  Thankfully, late Monday afternoon the email popped into my inbox and I’ve been accepted into the program for another year!  I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again.  I’m thankful to be considered and honored to be accepted into this crowd of bloggers, influencers and highly skilled individuals. Continue reading →

HPE InfoSight for Servers – Setup Guide – Part 2

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This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series HPE InfoSight for Servers - Setup Guide

HPE InfoSight for Servers - Setup GuideWelcome back!  This is Part 2 of my Setup Guide for HPE InfoSight for Servers.  In Part 1 of this series I talked about InfoSight and specifically InfoSight for Servers.  What it is, what it does and a bit about how it works.  I talked about the prerequisites, how to update iLO firmware on your servers, how to get the iLO Amplifier Pack and how to deploy it in vSphere.

In Part 2 we’re going to complete the iLO Amplifier configuration, perform server discovery in iLO Amplifier, configure it for InfoSight, do some troubleshooting and check out some of the features and functionality of HPE InfoSight for Servers.  Let’s continue from where we left off! Continue reading →

HPE InfoSight for Servers – Setup Guide – Part 1

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This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series HPE InfoSight for Servers - Setup Guide

HPE InfoSight for Servers - Setup GuideThis is my first post of the new year and it’s been a while.  I’ve been a little busy this year.  I’ll do better!  Anyway on to the fun part.  Since it’s the new year I figured I should invest some time implementing one of the most important features available to anyone with Gen8, Gen9 or Gen10 HPE Servers.  It’s called HPE InfoSight for Servers and it’s kind of a big deal.  You might have heard of InfoSight already if you’ve ever been exposed to Nimble Storage Arrays.  More on that in a bit.

HPE continues to extend the power of InfoSight across the products in their portfolio and in January 2019 they released HPE InfoSight for Servers.  They even made it basically free and supportable on legacy servers back to Gen8 as long as they have iLO4 or iLO5.  I’ve finally gotten some time to play with it in my lab and here we are.  Let’s dig into why you want this and learn more about Infosight in this two part article series! Continue reading →

VMworld 2019 – Wednesday

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This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series VMworld 2019

VMworld 2019Welcome back and thanks for reading!  Every single day out here has been a blast.  Wednesday was even better since I didn’t work the booth and I finally had a free day.  I got up surprisingly early and worked on the blog posts a bit.  I organized another lunch with several of my customers and partners and we ate at Delarosa.  I had some fantastic Steak Spiedini and was happy because of it all day.  Let’s see what else the day held in store! Continue reading →

VMworld 2019 – Tuesday

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This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series VMworld 2019

VMworld 2019So many announcements I can’t even keep up.  I’m going to have to spend the next few weeks streaming all the sessions I wasn’t able to attend and try and absorb all of this.  Kubernetes built into vSphere!  I can dig it.  It’s another super busy day between working the booth and hanging with customers and partners with events all over town.  Let’s check out the day in pictures! Continue reading →

VMworld 2019 – Monday

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This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series VMworld 2019

VMworld 2019Back for more?  Welcome and thanks for reading!  Monday at VMworld 2019 has been amazing.  The keynote by Pat Gelsinger was great.  It felt a little rushed but there was a ton of content to get through.  I always stream the keynote for many reasons but mostly because I don’t have to sit in uncomfortable chairs and fight the crowds.  While streaming it gave me the opportunity to get my post ready yesterday.  I had so much content to add copy to it took me way longer than I had hoped to get it posted.  So much to share and so little time to share it.  Speaking of, let’s get started on Monday! Continue reading →

VMworld 2019 – Sunday

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This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series VMworld 2019

VMworld 2019Day One of VMworld 2019 is finally here.  All the cool announcements, general sessions, hands on labs, expert led workshops and sessions galore.  This is probably the best tech conference around.  The community is awesome and the show is just amazing in scope and scale.  I’ll be documenting my trip here with pictures and commentary as time allows.  Keep checking in throughout the week for all the latest updates I can manage.  Let’s get started! Continue reading →

VMworld 2019 – Preflight Checklist

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This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series VMworld 2019

VMworld 2019It’s that time of year again!  Tech conference time and VMworld 2019 is at the top of the “must attend” list!  In just a few weeks myself and 20,000+ of the brightest technology minds will converge at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  For better or worse we’ve had a pretty significant venue change from the last three years.  I went to the last VMworld in San Francisco in 2015 and while I had a great time, I personally like Las Vegas quite a bit better.  Even so I’m looking forward to going this year because VMworld in any city is a great opportunity to learn, network and have fun! Continue reading →

vSphere 6.7 Update 2 Upgrade Guide

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vSphere 6.7 Update 2 UpgradeWelcome and thanks for reading!  VMware released vSphere 6.7 Update 2 within the last few months and I decided to upgrade my lab.  I previously upgraded from vSphere 6.7 to vSphere 6.7 Update 1 and thought I should share my experience again.  VMware has made this an incredibly simple process and I know many admins who are thankful for it.  It’s nearly a couple of clicks here and a couple of clicks there and you’re done.  Like any upgrade though, you have a few due diligence tasks you need to do before you upgrade.  Let’s go over those real quick. Continue reading →