Plain Virtualization

Many of our customers have done vulnerability assessment (VA) on vSphere ESXi and often highlighted out the vulerable items such as SHA1 and TLS 1.0, etc.  Some of it were there but not in used and we could not manually remove them such as SHA1, MD5, etc. While some of them were to support lower version such as TLS 1.1 and 1.0.  With vSphere 8, the security enhancement has made uplift to remove unwanted security bundles and as well to support only secured transport connection via TLS 1.2. On top of that, it also added daemons to now run in their own sandboxes instead of in the hypervisor world needing higher permissions which were unneeded and prone to vulnerability attacks. What is new for security is a timeout for SSH shell when enabled on ESXi host. So administrators, no longer are to leave the SSH shell connected for infinite time or even worse forgetting to disconnect and logout of the endpoint where they are connected to the ESXi shell. Lastly, if your hardware used for ...

 If you have not been following, VMware has quietly release update 1 for both vSphere and vSAN close to 3 months after the major release of version 8 for both. Catch announcement of vSphere 8 Update 1 and vSAN 8 update 1 . Here I will consolidate some of the read up to do a fast catch up. vSphere 8 Update 1 What's New Major feature summary Ability to attached a cluster Configuration Profile. Similar like how Host Profile works, but this is at cluster level. You will need to remove Host Profile from existing host in order to use Configuration Profile. vSphere Lifecycle Manager no longer just support cluster level. Now it can also be used for single standalone host as long it is managed by vCenter Server. Mixed GPU profile support in a single cluster. Prior to vSphere 8 Update 1, each cluster must use the same GPU profile for host leveraging on GPU. This version allows a mixed setup of GPU profile type. Support for Supervisor services when using virtual distributed switch. You will ...

Not going in-depth of new features but some overview so that everyone gets a quick glimpse and here is the link to VMware Blogs . Will update this article (if any) with links when it becomes available. vSphere 7.0 Overview . vCenter Server Simplified SSO Topology vCenter Server upgrade for customers with external PSC will enjoy the consolidated topology through this upgrade. embedded PSC will be the only topology moving forward. External PSC topology will be deprecated. vCenter Server Profiles ( link ) Just like how Host Profiles works. You can now compare and export the settings in JSON format as a backup or apply them to a new vCenter via REST API vCenter Multi-Homing ( link ) up to 4 vNIC where vNIC 1 is reserved for vCHA Maximum limit increased refer to  configmax.vmware.com Content Library There is a new view which you can enable. To help in managing templates, there is Check In/Out function to control versioning and revert to the previous version C...

During VMworld 2013, other than the announcement of solutions, there was also a new certification announcement.  That is a new entry certification also known as Associate which was mentioned here . For Data Center virtualization, we will have VCA_DV, for Cloud, VCA-Cloud and lastly for EUC, VCA-WM (a new term Workforce Mobility, which I think might replace the current name DT). For a start, VMware has a promotion code for a 50% discount stated here .  The advantage of having an Associate certification, allows professional to have a easy head start without any prerequisites to take their first step towards VMware certification.  The cost of the exam is roughly about USD130 (SGD160 for me).  From now to end of the year 2013, when you book the associate exam, you will automatically receive 50% discount. Some may not require to attend a course due to their scope of work but a recognition of their understanding of the technology.  With this, not only one doe...