MTI Secure Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Webinar

So last Thursday I was asked by the marketing peeps at my company, MTI Technology, to run a webinar with my colleague, Andrew Tang, around what Hyper-Converged Infrastructure is all about, why it's suddenly become so popular within the industry, and how best to secure a HCI solution. The webinar has now been uploaded for … Continue reading MTI Secure Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Webinar

End of General Support for vSphere 5.5 and other Products

So there's 7 months left from today until vSphere 5.5 and complimentary VMware products go out of General Support. The official EoGS date for vSphere 5.5 is 19th September 2018. The products going EoGS on that same date are: Site Recovery Manager 5.5/5.8 vSAN 5.5 vCenter Server 5.5 (including Update Manager 5.5) vSphere Replication 5.5/5.6/5.8 … Continue reading End of General Support for vSphere 5.5 and other Products

Dell EMC updates VxRail software to address Spectre

So Dell EMC have finally released the patches for their VxRail appliances, I know many of my customers were asking about these patches - in a way it's good it was slightly delayed given how many normal VMware customers experienced issues when patching and how one patch was pulled by VMware! The good thing about … Continue reading Dell EMC updates VxRail software to address Spectre

Spectre & Meltdown Update

So it seems that the microcode patches released by VMware associated with their recent Security Advisory (VMSA-2018-0004) have been pulled.... https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/52345 So that's ESXi650-201801402-BG, ESXi600-201801402-BG, or ESXi550-201801401-BG. The microcode patch provided by Intel was buggy and there seems to be issues when VMs access the new speculative execution control mechanism (Haswell & Broadwell processors). However, I … Continue reading Spectre & Meltdown Update

Spectre & Meltdown Vulnerabilities

So at the beginning of the new year, news broke via The Register that there could be a potential security vulnerability to Intel processors (Meltdown) and how it was a problem which couldn't be easily fixed by a microcode update because of how the Intel architecture does speculative execution of code (in a nutshell this is how … Continue reading Spectre & Meltdown Vulnerabilities

VMware on Microsoft Azure….. interesting!

Earlier this week, Microsoft let slip that they were working with Premier VMware partners on a tech preview to deploy a full VMware stack on Azure bare-metal hardware, co-located with other Azure services. Initially billed as a 'stepping-stone' to full Azure Cloud, Microsoft have made known that "sometimes there are specific VMware workloads that can … Continue reading VMware on Microsoft Azure….. interesting!

vSphere Central – new resource centre

A little while back I caught the vSphere blog about vSphere Central being launched and ended up bookmarking the portal to have a look at a later date. I had totally forgot about it till today when I needed to look up the PSC topology diagrams and Google sent me to the new vSphere 6.5 … Continue reading vSphere Central – new resource centre

Horizon Cloud on Azure – GA

Interesting tie up between VMware and Microsoft.... is this the beginning of a new relationship? Have Microsoft woken up (post-VMworld) to the awesome VMware Cloud on AWS and realised they also want in on the party? (although if i'm honest this partnership has been bubbling in the background for a while now). Anyways, after a … Continue reading Horizon Cloud on Azure – GA

VMworld 2017 Europe Wrap Up….

So this blog post has been a bit late coming, mainly due to me coming back from Barcelona with a heavy chest infection and cold... and when you're sick, you tend to procrastinate alot... =) Looks like all the excessive late nights, early morning starts, long days, freezing cold breakout rooms (was anyone else cold??) … Continue reading VMworld 2017 Europe Wrap Up….

VMworld 2017 US General Session Day 2

..... This update is a bit late going up because Tuesday evenings is 5-a-side footie for me.... =) So what was the General Session on Day 2 all about... well it kicked off with a fireside chat between Pat Gelsinger and Michael Dell, answering a few questions that were submitted the previous evening from attendees. … Continue reading VMworld 2017 US General Session Day 2