Plain Virtualization

Something got a release note today known as vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 1.0.  What is this software about? VMware has a bundle known as vCloud Suite.  Just a breakdown what is in vCloud Suite/ vCloud Suite is a comprises of two things: vRealize Suite + vSphere Enterprise Plus. vRealize Suite (depending on Editions) will consist of some or all of the below: vRealize Automation vRealize Business vRealize Operations Manager vRealize Log Insight vSphere (depending on edition) will consist of some or all of the below: vCenter Standard (purchase separately) ESXi vSphere Replication vSphere Data Protection (last major edition) vSphere Big Data Extension Looking at the above, you start to see that installing and managing the upgrade will be a big tedious process.  Lots of planning and double and triple check the compatibility matrix. So here comes vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager.  This handles the deployment and patching...

Recently, I get a lot of questions regarding vSphere Enterprise Edition and some confusion around it. The reason of these questions because VMware announced the end of availability (EOA) of vSphere Enterprise Edition on 9th Feb.  What this means that if you want to purchase vSphere Enterprise, this will no longer be available, you are left with only 3 options; vSphere Standard, vSphere Enterprise Plus or vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus (vSOM) (excluding all those small kits e.g. vSphere Essentials, etc.). What will happen to vSphere Enterprise in terms of support? Support will still be valid until March 2020 as long support and maintenance is still valid. Can I upgrade/downgrade my existing vSphere Enterprise to a valid edition? You can only upgrade but not downgrade.  In this case, you can only move up to vSphere Enterprise Plus or vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus (vSOM). Am currently on vSphere 6.0 Enterprise or below, can...

If you are new to VMware or not aware, VMware has a Security Advisories page that publishes any new vulnerabilities found in any of its products, including VMware Fusion and Workstation. In fact, to keep yourself updated, it is good to subscribe for such new notices.  Just head over to the page to subscribe. Just yesterday, 15th Sept, there is a critical vulnerability notice which affects ESXi 6.5 (not the Update 1). Always good to stay up to date and apply such critical patches as soon as you can.

I get this so often and decide to just clear this up. In any ISV or software vendors where you purchase their software, the license received will always be the latest.  This applies the same for any VMware products. You won't want to purchase something from the market to find that it was 1 year ago right? So what if your environment is running an older version and you just acquire new licenses which are a newer version than yours when you want to scale? Don't worry, you can always go to your VMware license portal  and select a number of licenses that you want to downgrade to.  The version available is the Products version that is still supported. You can also upgrade your older version of the product to the later or latest version as long your licenses are still under Support & Subscription (SnS). At the time of writing, using vSphere version 5.5 is still supported so the lowest version will be 5.5.  This also to give you a reminder, never to run...