Category: Reviews

VMware Docs - Main Window 0

VMware Docs

What’s VMware Docs VMware has launch VMware Docs officially, this is a single platform for accessing to VMware products documents as a unified portal. All documents are available in different versions (Actually Current Versions) and languages. VMware Docs Features Online or Offline Reading Users have access to all published documents for any VMware product via VMware Docs, the documents are available as HTML format and PDF format, so users be able to download and read the documents offline. Searching and Filtering VMware Docs provides searching and filtering feature to find exact information about the products, features, patches, installation, configuration and any other things. The search will return results from the below content sources: KB Articles Technical Papers Product Documentation Search results will be filtered by different information types, products and subjects.   My Library VMware Docs provides My Library feature for each user and users be able to collect documents to collections. Collections are shareable and users can share their collections with each other. Searching and filtering features are also available on the collections.  

Ransomware 0

Protect Virtual Machine: How to Stay Safe from Ransomware

How can we protect VM against ransomware? This is important question for any infrastructure administrator. Actually, Ransomware is a computer malware, and it will be installed on wide range of devices such as computers, smartphones and wearable devices. It can attack to data and encrypt data then ask user to pay for decrypt data. Users may encounter in a number of ways. The most common method used by attackers to spread software is via e-mail as an attached file. Protecting Virtual Machines Most companies are using VDI solutions to deliver desktop experience to the users and virtual desktops acting same as physical desktop. Even all protection steps are provided for protecting users data such as strong anti-virus, firewall, email malware detection and other ways, attackers will try new way to infect user data and keep data as hostage and ask to pay money. When users data is encrypted by a Ransomware, administrators can help them by restoring their data from a valid backup, so one of solutions to protecting data is taking backup from them. Traditional Backup Administrators can ask users to keep their important data on shared folder or removable devices or sync them with same folders on other computers. But this is...

vSphere 6.5 0

VMware Hardware Version 13

Each new version of vSphere includes some improvements and new features and many of them will be applied on virtual machines. The improvements and features will be add to “Hardware Version” and you be able to use those, if you use latest “Hardware Version”. It’s strongly recommended that don’t upgrade your hardware version to latest just when you need to use a specific feature or expand hardware resources that older hardware version doesn’t support that. Because “Hardware Version” doesn’t have any compatibility with older ESXi and if you have mixed cluster, you can’t use latest hardware version. Here is an example: You have a cluster and the cluster contains some ESXi 6.5, 6.0 and 5.5. If you upgrade hardware version to 11, your virtual machine will be hosted by ESXi 6.0, ESXi 6.5 and the machine will not be migrated on ESXi 5.5. So, keep your hardware version compatible with oldest ESXi in your environment. You can downgrade hardware version but it’s not recommended. For make sure about hardware version, you can change default version on your cluster anytime. Let’s review new hardware version, compare it with older versions and compatibility with ESXi: Feature ESXi 6.5 and later ESXi 6.0...

Ksplice 0

KSPLICE: Zero Downtime Updates For Oracle Linux

Introduction Ksplice is a part of Oracle Linux, updates the Linux operating system (OS) kernel, while it is running, without a reboot or any interruption. Only Oracle Linux offers this unique capability, making it possible for you to keep up with important Linux updates without burdening your team with the operational cost and disruption of rebooting for every update to Linux. Benefits Key benefits of using Ksplice are as follows: Lower your operational costs by reducing the amount of supervision time required for reboots. Improve application availability and uptime. Realize greater security with the ability to promptly install OS upgrades. Experience true enterprise support for Linux. Key Features Rollback capability. Any update that can be applied using Ksplice can also be reversed without rebooting. No performance impact. Ksplice does not negatively affect performance. No virtualization, daemon, or system agent is required. Web interface and API. View and manage the status of Ksplice on all your systems, from one place – either via a Web interface, or programmatically via a REST API. Virtualization-ready. Ksplice works perfectly well in virtualized environments. You can visit official web site for more information.

VMware vSAN 6.5 – Licensing Guide 0

VMware vSAN 6.5 – Licensing Guide

VMware vSAN, formerly known as VMware Virtual SAN, is the industry-leading software powering Hyper-Converged Infrastructure solutions. What vSAN Does Enables You to Respond 10X Faster Respond to dynamic business needs 10x faster with a simplified infrastructure that allows compute and storage to be effortlessly managed as one. Reduce hardware silos, automate provisioning and change management, and scale your infrastructure easily as your business grows. Eliminate traditional performance tuning and sizing tasks and get more out of your resources with a fully flash-optimized HCI. Reduces TCO By 50% Reduce total cost of ownership by 50% by eliminating traditional hardware storage costs with intelligent software-defined storage that accelerates the shift to server economics, affordable flash, and the broadest selection of x86 platforms for HCI. Reduce operational expenses with rapid deployment and simplified day-to-day management using VM-level automation and one familiar management tool, vCenter. Scales to Tomorrow Prepare for tomorrow’s dynamic business in the multi-cloud era with a solution designed to leverage the latest hardware technologies and ready to support a wide range of applications, from business critical applications to next-gen applications using containers. Enjoy a common storage platform for your applications, whether running on-premises or off-premises, and use it as a stepping-stone...

HP Lights-Out Configuration Utility – 1.5.0 0

HP Lights-Out Configuration Utility – 1.5.0

The Lights-Out Configuration Utility (HPQLOCFG.EXE) is a Windows®-based utility that connects to iLO 3 or iLO 4 using a secure connection over the network. RIBCL scripts are passed over the secure connection to HPQLOCFG. This utility requires a valid user ID and password with the appropriate privileges. For iLO 4 Firmware version 2.30 and onwards, it is a must to upgrade to  HPQLOCFG v1.50. For iLO 4 Firmware versions below 2.30, iLO 2 and iLO 3, it is recommended to upgrade to HPQLOCFG v1.50. This version of HPQLOCFG supports iLO 4 firmware version 2.30 onwards when FIPS Mode or Enforce AES/3DES Encryption mode is enabled. Note: If AES/FIPS is enabled in iLO, you may need to upgrade to .NET Framework v4.5 or above to communicate with iLO. Also make sure the Operating System supports TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2. For more information please see iLO 4 Scripting and Command Line Guide. You can download new version from HPE web site.

VMware Labs New Flings – PowerCLI Core 0

VMware Labs New Flings – PowerCLI Core

You know that PowerCLI is one of useful automation tools in vSphere and many administrators using it for automating their tasks, creating reports, changing configurations and others. Actually, PowerCLI is a package of PowerShell modules and you need to have Windows for use this tool. But now and after introducing PowerShell for Linux and Mac OS by Microsoft, VMware engineers provide a similar tool for administrator that they can install and run it on Linux, Mac OS and Docker. The new tool (PowerCLI Core) is available for download on this link Read its requirements and installation instruction as well.

VMware TrustPoint 0

VMware TrustPoint

VMware TrustPoint empowers security and IT teams with 15-second1 visibility and control to secure and manage every endpoint across large global networks. Combining VMware’s time-tested management capabilities and Tanium’s leadingedge security platform, VMware TrustPoint provides complete endpoint visibility and control with next-generation threat detection and remediation at unparalleled speed and scalability. VMware TrustPoint helps security and IT operations teams realize new levels of cost efficiency and stay a step ahead of modern sophisticated attacks while setting the bar for security hygiene across the entire environment. Features Setting the Bar for Endpoint Security Hygiene Quickly find unmanaged assets within the enterprise across large global networks and allow security and IT teams to directly take actions necessary to review, secure and gain control of these assets. Migrate to the Most Secure Version of Windows A manual Windows 10 migration can often take between four and six hours per PC or POS device. With TrustPoint, a single technician can concurrently handle 100 or more migrations per day from the central management console, getting your users to a safer place on Windows 10. Discover Unmanaged Endpoints in Seconds TrustPoint detects hidden unmanaged assets across large distributed global networks. Unlike the extremely time-consuming approaches that...

Splunk Log Management 0

Splunk Log Management

When an environment is growing-up because of growing-up its business, challenges and problem will be grow. Administrators needs some assistance tools for troubleshooting and finding root cause of issues or monitor their environments. Most of enterprise operating systems and applications can generate log files and submit any changes or modification on log files. You know, when any environment has more than one critical application, keeping log files on servers is very dangerous and it’s very difficult. Most of administrators uses “Syslog Server” or “Log Collector” for organizing their log files. Some of moderns “Syslog” servers be able to categorizing and analyzing received log files in addition of storing log files or taking backups from them. There is many companies and application such as SolarWinds Kiwi, VMware Syslog Collector and others. Splunk Log Management Splunk has log management suite that you can use it for storing your log files, histories and analyzing your logs. You can collect, store, index, search, correlate, visualize, analyze and report on any machine-generated data to identify and resolve operational and security issues in a faster, repeatable and more affordable way. It’s an enterprise ready, fully integrated solution for log management data collection, storage and visualization Ad...

ESXi Reliable Memory Technology 0

ESXi Reliable Memory Technology

VMware has introduced new feature for kernel protection against memory error in ESXi. VMware called the new feature: Reliable Memory Technology or RTM. The feature is one of new features in ESXi 5.5! ESXi use a zone of memory that it’s more reliable than other offsets of memory, so risk of PSOD will be reduced. Also when part of memory has error, ESXi will stop to using the part of memory. There is some other technique against memory corruption or memory health error such as memory mirroring but Reliable Memory Technology can help you on this regard without loosing half of your memory capacity. Because memory mirroring is just like to RAID 1 on hard disks. Dell has introduced another feature on its server by using Reliable Memory Technology and called the new feature: Fault Resilient Memory or FRM. Fault Resilient Memory will provide “Fault Resilient Zone” and ESXi will put its kernel to the zone. The features can protect ESXi kernel and VMs as well. So if you have critical service on a VM, you can force ESXi to keep its memory on RTM or FRM zone to avoid memory error and down time for the machine. You can configure...

ESXi Embedded Host Client 001 0

VMware Fling – ESXi Embedded Host Client

Few years ago, you have to install vSphere Client on a Windows machine to manage your standalone ESXi server or connect to your server via SSH and run your commands to do something. VMware engineers are working on some unofficial projects and calling them “Fling”, most of them are favorite to me and you can do anything that you can’t do by using standard software or even third-party software. The engineers was working on a good, very good software and it has been released one year ago. ESXi Embedded Host Client is the software and it’s like vSphere Web Client but it doesn’t support vCenter. You can do any action which are available on vSphere Client for a ESXi such as creating new VMs, managing hardware, security, networks and etc. You can find this explanation on VMware Labs: The ESXi Embedded Host Client is a native HTML and JavaScript application and is served directly from your ESXi host! It should perform much better than any of the existing solutions. You can download it as a VIB file and install it easily, there is no need to any specific configuration. Also the software offers you a web based console for viewing...

ReactOS Desktop 0.4.2 0

ReactOS

ReactOS is a free, community, open-source and compatible with Windows applications and you can run your Windows programs on this. ReactOS development began in 1996 as a Windows 95 clone project. Main goal of this project is : Provide an operating system which is binary compatible with Windows … such that people accustomed to the familiar user interface of Windows would find using ReactOS straightforward. The ultimate goal of ReactOS is to allow you to remove Windows and install ReactOS without the end user noticing the change. This OS has 18 years old and latest stable version is 0.4.2 that it was released at 16 August 2016. This OS is a good environment for testing purpose. Its installation is very simple and it’s like old Windows installation. You can download it from its web site: http://www.reactos.org/download ReactOS can be installed on virtual machine, if you want install it on VM, please read this Wiki: https://reactos.org/wiki/VMware Here is a video from installation process: Please note that you can’t install VMware Tools on it and you have to install drivers on it manually. If you select “Windows XP Professional” when you are creating machine, you can install drivers by VMware Tools but...

Windows Operating System Optimization Tool Guide 1

Windows Operating System Optimization Tool Guide

OS optimization is very important when you want to use VMware Horizon and deliver virtual desktop machines to your user. As you may know, there is a fling (VMware OS Optimization Tool) that made by VMware engineers and you can use it to optimize your OS automatically. VMware has published a guide for this tool and you can download it fro this link: VMware Windows Operating System Optimization Tool Guide I suggest that read the above guide before do any action on your template and deploy machine from that.

VSFTPD 1 0

VSFTPD Configuration – RedHat Enterprise 6.x

Past week, I had to research and learn about “VSFTPD” and implement SFTP server for one of our customers. I want to share the instructions and my experiences about that. May be, It will help you in future. What is “VSFTPD”? “VSFTPD”, (or very secure FTP daemon) is an FTP server for Unix-like systems, including Linux. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License. It supports IPv6 and SSL. “VSFTPD” supports explicit (since 2.0.0) and implicit (since 2.1.0) FTPS. “VSFTPD” is the default FTP server in the Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, NimbleX, Slackware and RHEL Linux distributions. What is scenario? We need to create an user for SFTP connection and restrict the user in the user’s home directory. The user can put files to “Outgoing” directory for upload and put files to “Incoming” directory for download. The directories are in “/home/the_user_folder/” and the user will be restricted and the user can’t create directory in home directory but can create directory in “Incoming” and “Outgoing” directories. Implementation First Step, Installation In order to implement VSFTPD server, we need to install two packages: OpenSSL VSFTPD You can install them by YUM or by RPM. Like this: rpm -i /media/RHEL-6.8\ Server.x86_64/Packages/openssl098e-0.9.8e-20.el6_7.1.x86_64.rpm rpm -i...

Teradici PCoIP Management Console 2.2 0

Teradici PCoIP Management Console 2.2

Latest software release brings the following NEW capabilities: Inventory Reporting – Quickly gain insight into your device inventory with a generated report that can be imported into nearly any inventory management system. The report can be customized to match the devices and fields you want to see through the use of table columns and filters in PCoIP Management Console Enterprise Edition – allowing you to stay on top of your deployment. Microsoft Edge web browser is now supported This is in addition to PCoIP Management Console Enterprise Edition enabling large enterprise deployments to manage up to 20,000 Tera2 PCoIP Zero Clients from a single console by multiple administration users. Plus, the software includes the assurance of Teradici Support and Maintenance for both the Tera2 PCoIP Zero Client firmware and PCoIP Management Console. With highly demanded enterprise features and usability, users can enjoy greater up-time. You can find more information such as price on this link: PCoIP Management Console