New courses available for VMware vSphere 6.7

With September fast approaching and the end of life for VMware vSphere 5.5 support also approaching fast, it may be time to look at training on the latest version of the VMware vSphere product.

As a VCI I have a vested interest in training area and as such would love to see some of you attend the courses I deliver.

The two new courses available cover two areas, we have firstly the course suitable for people new to VMware or needing a complete refresh.

VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V6.7]

Overview:

This five-day course features intensive hands-on training that focuses on installing, configuring, and managing VMware vSphere® 6.7, which includes VMware ESXi™ 6.7 and VMware vCenter Server® 6.7. This course prepares you to administer a vSphere infrastructure for an organisation of any size. It is the foundation for most other VMware technologies in the software-defined data centre.

Product Alignment

ESXi 6.7
vCenter Server 6.7

The second course is for those wishing to update their skills from vSphere 5.x to vSphere 6.x

VMware vSphere: What's New [V5.5 to V6.7]

Overview:

In this three-day, hands-on training course, you explore the new features and enhancements in VMware vCenter Server® 6.7 and VMware ESXi™ 6.7. Real-world use-case deployment scenarios, hands-on lab exercises, and lectures teach you the skills that you need to effectively implement and configure VMware vSphere® 6.7. This course is recommended for customers who want to deploy vSphere 6.7 into their existing vSphere environment.

Product Alignment

ESXi 6.7
vCenter Server 6.7

Also watch out for additional courses being announced. Hope to see you one day on one of my courses.

VMware Upgrade paths across VCP tracks

As a VCI, I am often asked about certification, and for most people it's fairly straight forward.

However for people who's certification is about to expire, perhaps it's not that straight forward.

Thankfully Karl Childs of VMware has produced a couple of Blogs on the VMware Education Blog that are extremely useful.

The first one is New “Bridge” Upgrade Path for Current VCPs, which explains that, any VCP who is two versions behind the most current available version in the same solution track can upgrade to the latest by only taking one exam.

The second one is Certification Insights: Mind the Gap! Your Upgrade Paths Across Tracks, this introduces the new policy:

Crossing certification tracks rule: This policy allows active certification holders to upgrade to a different certification track, as long as the current certification is within two product versions.

VMware vSphere 6.7 - What's New - technical paper

I've been working with vSphere 6.7 for a little while now, and in class talking about vSphere 6.7 for a while now, this had led to multiple links to multiple sites.

Thankfully VMware, to be precise, Emad Younis, Mike Foley, Eric Gray, Kyle Ruddy, and Sudhir Balasubramanian have produced a technical paper entitled:

WHAT’S NEW IN VMWARE vSPHERE 6.7

Over 32 pages this technical paper explains the new functionality and features of VMwares latest version of their vSphere product.

                                               WHAT’S NEW IN VMWARE vSPHERE 6.7

VMC on AWS - Just some thoughts

As an IT veteran of now more than 30 years, I have watched the cyclic nature of IT.

I started in 1986 working in a centralised datacentre, it was offsite and used an IBM mainframe, my company then moved to a LAN based network using Novell products, which gave us an onsite datacentre, then came virtualisation with VMware, still onsite, and now I’m back around in full circle, talking about offsite datacentres, and we call this the cloud.

Like many of my peers I’m happy with my on premises datacentre, I’ve invested time in training, server hardware, software and, experience of having full control of what I have, but I like the flexibility and potential cost savings that the cloud can give me, but I don’t want to throw away what I know and what I maintain.

There must be an alternative, and there is, the hybrid cloud, I get the security of my own datacentre, but if required I get the flexibility of the public cloud. I maintain my skillset, but as an IT professional, I get to also continue moving forward with new skills.

I attended VMworld in Barcelona last year, the big push point for me, was that VMware were now promoting themselves as a cloud company, my main focus was VMware and Amazon coming together to give me what I asked for, a hybrid solution called VMC (VMware on the Cloud) on AWS (Amazon Web Services). For me, hybrid is the future, we don’t have to be purely private cloud, or public cloud, let’s do both.

What is VMC on AWS?

VMware Cloud on AWS is an on-demand service that enables you to run applications across vSphere-based cloud environments, on premises or Private Cloud integrates with the VMware products running inside an AWS datacentre, with access to a broad range of AWS services. Utilising VMware Cloud Foundation, this service integrates with VMware’s Software Defined Datacentre products.

VMware vSphere provided the Compute functionality to the services than run.

VMware vSAN gives object based software defined storage, allowing per service policies for performance and redundancy.

VMware NSX gives a 7 layer software defined networking solution.

VMware vCenter management, gives a consistent view of the entire cloud, and this in turn allows traditional VMware administrators to continue to utilise the management skills already mastered.

VMC on AWS is optimized to run on dedicated, elastic, bare-metal AWS infrastructure. With VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension, customers can easily and rapidly perform large-scale bi-directional migrations between on-premises and VMware Cloud on AWS environments.

Important to remember, these are not virtualised ESXi servers in an AWS datacentre, these are bare metal servers hosted in an AWS datacentre, and yes the UK has this support.

Why VMC on AWS?

On premises solutions can be prohibitively expensive, with our modern Agile working environments this can become a major stumbling block to our business requirements, with VMware VMC on AWS, VMware have provided an environment that can scale in or out quickly. This can provide the following benefits.

• ·         Enterprise-Grade Capabilities – Leveraging VMware’s SDDC products that are already familiar.

·     Simple and Consistent Operations – In just a few clicks a VMware environment can be provisioned in a hybrid environment.

·        Flexible Consumption to Suit Your Business Needs – Consume what is needed, when it is needed.

·        Delivered as a Service from VMware – No need to deal with multiple vendors. VMware are responsible for the ongoing support of the entire hybrid environment.

Use Cases for VMC on AWS

Although all companies can think of reasons for utilising the cloud, here are a few suggestions.

• ·        Cloud Migration - Rapidly and easily migrate vSphere-based workloads to the cloud with VMware Cloud on AWS. Utilise familiar VMware tools and skills to accelerate cloud migrations. Once in the cloud, utilise VMware and AWS services to modernize your applications at your leisure.
• ·         Application Migration - Extend on premises data centres and easily migrate application workloads to VMC on AWS. Allow business workload portability between on-premises and VMware Cloud on AWS. Allowing applications optimized access to native AWS services.
• ·         System Expansion - Easily extend your systems into the cloud and get VMware-consistent, enterprise-grade environments in the AWS cloud in a fast and cost-effective way with VMware Cloud on AWS. Allowing for new projects and business locations to be provisioned quickly and easily with a trusted platform.
• ·         Flexible and on-demand Capacity - Get VMware Software Defined Data Centre capacity in the AWS Cloud in minutes whenever there is a business need to meet temporary, seasonal, or unplanned demand. Such as an impromptu sale.  Take advantage of elastic capacity and usage-based costings of VMware Cloud on AWS by moving your live applications into an environment that is operationally consistent with your VMware data centre.
• ·         Test and Development – Quickly deploy on demand systems with VMC on AWS for test and development, these systems can be spun up and down without the reliance of having to purchase additional on premises hardware.
• ·         Disaster Recovery as a Service with VMware Site Recovery - Easily deliver business continuity with VMware Site Recovery using your on premises and VMC on AWS

To conclude, with the dynamic environments in which work, Agile working practices and being able to be one step ahead of the competition, the hybrid cloud allows this to happen.

With VMC on AWS, all VMware professionals have an environment that is consistent with the current on premise version of VMware (must be at least version 6.5), workloads are extended into an extension of the datacentre, this gives users a robust and reliable system and allows for the continuing use of what is already a heavily invested system.

For administrators, support is provided by VMware and continues to allow IT to utilise management systems that they have used for years, rather than have to learn new management utilities such as the AWS console, all administration is done via VMware utilities.

With VMC on AWS the hybrid cloud gives the flexibility to develop systems and applications for the future, and to also allow a company the flexibility to decide were those systems will live, but also allow the dynamic environment to move those applications from on premise to the cloud and back again.

 

 

 

Are you going to VMworld 2018 Las Vegas or Barcelona or both?

I've been extremely lucky over the last few years to attend VMware VMWorld in Europe and the States.

I'll be there again this year at Barcelona.

There's a number of reasons to go.

1) This is the most important for me, this is an opportunity to meet my peers and see how they ustilise VMware products, and to share real world uses of the products, this is important to me as a VMware Certified Instructor, as it allows me to tell stories in my classes about the products, rather than just teach the tech.

I also get to catch up with friends from around the world and to also make new friends.

2) The sessions, this is an opportunity to get deep dives and introductions to the newest products, you get to know what the product is, see what the product does, and also learn how to troubleshoot the products in the rare event they don't behave as expected.

3) The General sessions, this is an opportunity to learn about the present and future of VMware, it's amazing to see the passion of the senior management at VMware, as well as the passion from the staff at VMware.

4) The Sponsors Hall, have a look at the technologies that VMware runs on, and also the technologies that complement VMware, and support VMware, leave your suitcase half empty, this is where you get the freebies.

5) Hands On Labs, play with the product.

6) Education Village, come along and sit on some sessions about the products you use, sit some exams and if you see me, say hello.

7) The parties, last year we had the Kaiser Chiefs headlining the party, again, it's an opportunity to catch up with friends.

Hope to see you there.

To register, click the link.

Register for VMworld 

Enterprise Mobility and Security

I've been looking at Mobility solutions this week along with associated security.

"Most organizations are proactive when protecting PCs from attack, but mobile devices often go unmonitored and unprotected. Mobile platforms, even with built-in protections, can remain vulnerable to sophisticated attacks. As more and more of your employees use devices for work, protecting these devices becomes critical to protecting your sensitive information. To help you keep your data secure,

Intune provides device compliance reports with detailed information on the compliance posture of devices in your organization. Your admins can quickly troubleshoot compliance-related issues and drill down into individual devices to view specific settings and policies that affect the device."

For more information have a look at the  Enterprise mobility and Security newsletter

VMware vSphere 6.7 - vCenter Deployment Topologies

On a number of the VMware courses that I deliver we talk about the VMware vCenter product.

I generally talk about vCenter, but I should actually talk about vCenter and the Platform Services Controller or PSC. It's historical and age that means I talk about the combined services as the vCenter.

In Summary these two bits of software do two different sets of services.

Lets start with the PSC , the PSC provides the following services.

• vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO)
• VMware License Server
• Lookup Service
• VMware Certificate Authority (CA)
• Certificate Store
• VMware Directory Service

The vCenter component provides the following services.

• vCenter Server
• vSphere Web Client (server)
• vSphere Update Manager (VUM)
• VMware vSphere Auto Deploy
• VMware vSphere ESXi Dump Collector
• VMware vSphere Syslog Collector

These two distinct bits of software can be installed on one box (embedded mode), or split between boxes (distributed mode).

Fiedhlim O'Leary of VMware has produced a lightboard talking about the ways in which vCenter can be deployed and the considerations for both.