Category: Reviews

Ubuntu OVA 2

Reviews / Free Tools

Ubuntu OVA – VMware Horizon View

Ubuntu OVA As you may know, VMware Horizon View supporting some Linux desktop distribution as virtual desktop from VMware Horizon View 7.x, it means that you can deliver Linux desktops to users. There is many performance recommendations about delivering virtual desktops to users and should be considered by administrators on any operating systems. Most administrators are familiar with Windows OS but few of them are expert in Linux. There is many guides and tools for Windows optimization such as VMware OS Optimization Tool but there isn’t enough official guides and tools for Linux. Ubuntu is most popular Linux desktop and server distributions and VMware’s engineers made a virtual appliance for using as virtual desktop by installing Ubuntu desktop on virtual machine. The image contains two scripts, first script will optimize Ubuntu machine for using as virtual desktop and second script will assist you about VMware Horizon View Agent installation. Requirements User permissions to deploy OVA/OVF Optimization script requires VM to have network access VM must be able to resolve https://raw.githubusercontent.com Domain Admin privileges (if joining to the domain) vSphere 6.0 U2, or later vSphere 6.5 or later ESXi 6.0 U2 or later Horizon Connection Server 7.1 or later Horizon Client 4.4 or later Comprehensive...

Photon Platform 1

Reviews

VMware Cloud Native Application | Photon Platform

What’s VMware Cloud Native Application? Operating System Level Virtualization or Container is one of most popular IT concepts during few past year and many companies are working on their native solutions for supporting container concept on their products such as operating systems like Microsoft or Red Hat and Oracle. VMware has introduced VMware Cloud Native Application to supporting container on virtualization platform. VMware Cloud Native Application helps developers and operation administrators to create cloud applications quickly and securely. VMware delivers the Cloud Native Application by Photon Platform. Photon Platform is a Operating System Level Virtualization platform that deliver container on virtual servers based on Photon OS and ESXi. Photon Platform VMware Photon Platform is a container-optimized cloud platform which delivers on-demand tools and services for developers to build, test, and run modern applications while enabling IT to retain security, control and performance of data center infrastructure.   Purpose-built for cloud-native applications with integrated container infrastructure support, Photon Platform is a fully API-driven, multi-tenant platform which brings the scale, performance and features previously accessible only to hyper-scale web companies into enterprise data centers. It leverages industry-leading compute, networking, and storage technologies to bring best-in-class performance, reliability and ease-of-use for cloudnative workloads. Photon Platform | Key Features Production-grade, fully supported Kubernetes distribution...

VMware Docs - Main Window 0

Reviews / News

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

Backup & Replication / Reviews

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

Reviews / Server Virtualization

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

Reviews

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

Reviews

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

Reviews

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

Reviews

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

Reviews

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

Reviews

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

Reviews / Server Virtualization

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

Reviews

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

Reviews

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

Reviews

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.