Random Short Take #77

Welcome to Random Short Take #77. Spring has sprung. Let’s get random.

Finally, the blog turned 15 years old recently (about a month ago). I’ve been so busy with the day job that I forgot to appropriately mark the occasion. But I thought we should do something. So if you’d like some stickers (I have some small ones for laptops, and some big ones because I can’t measure things properly), send me your address via this contact form and I’ll send you something as a thank you for reading along.

Random Short Take #76

Welcome to Random Short Take #76. Summer’s almost here. Let’s get random.

 

Brisbane VMUG – April 2022

The April 2022 edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting will be held on Thursday 28th April. It’s powered by VMware, Google Cloud, and Queensland University of Technology and promises to be a great event. It’s also an opportunity to welcome the new leaders to the Brisbane VMUG team: Claire O’Dwyer and Antony West.

Agenda

Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) – Tech Overview and Key Use Cases

In this session we will cover the GCVE platform in depth, as well as GCVE’s technical advantages when compared to other “VMware on X” solutions. As well as diving into the GCVE solution, we will cover some key technical use cases for the platform (e.g. Backup/DR options from an on-premises DC to GCVE).

Delivered by Clay Quinn, Customer Engineer, Google Cloud.

This will be followed by:

Automating Deployments and Configuration Management with Salt

Salt is an open-source configuration management tool with some interesting and useful features. In this session we will cover some of the key capabilities and concepts of Salt and demonstrate how we can use Salt to deploy configure and manage environments.

Delivered by Mark Foley, Senior Solutions Engineer, VMware

PIZZA AND NETWORKING BREAK! (Exciting!)

And we will be finishing off with:

Migrating from NSX-V to NSX-T

Delivered by Tony Williamson, Senior Consultant, VMware PSO.

Soft drinks and vBeers will be available throughout the evening. We look forward to seeing you there! Doors open at 5pm.

You can find out more information and register for the event here. Note that the March 2022 meeting had to be rescheduled due to ‘Rona issues – I’ll update the blog when I have new dates for that one.

Random Short Take #66

Happy New Year. Let’s get random.

  • Excited about VMware Cloud Director releases? Me too. 10.3.2 GA was recently announced, and you can read more about that here.
  • Speaking of Cloud Director, Al Rasheed put together this great post on deploying VCD 10.3.x – you can check it out here
  • Getting started with VMware Cloud on AWS but feeling a bit confused by some of the AWS terminology? Me too. Check out this extremely useful post on Amazon VPCs from a VMware perspective.
  • Still on VMware Cloud on AWS. So you need some help with HCX? My colleague Greg put together this excellent guide a little while ago – highly recommended. This margarita recipe is also highly recommended, if you’re into that kind of thing. 
  • Speaking of hyperscalers, Mellor put together a nice overview of Hyve Solutions here
  • Detecting audio problems in your home theatre? Are you though? Tom Andry breaks down what you should be looking for here.  
  • Working with NSX-T and needing to delete route advertisement filters via API? Say no more
  • Lost the password you set on that Raspbian install? Frederic has you covered

Random Short Take #62

Welcome to Random Short take #62. It’s Friday afternoon, so I’ll try and keep this one brief.

  • Tony was doing some stuff in his lab and needed to clean up a bunch of ports in his NSX-T segment. Read more about what happened next here.
  • Speaking of people I think of when I think automation, Chris Wahl wrote a thought-provoking article on deep work that is well worth checking out.
  • While we’re talking about work, Nitro has published its 2022 Productivity Report. You can read more here.
  • This article from Backblaze on machine learning and predicting hard drive failure rates was interesting. Speaking of Backblaze, if you’re thinking about signing up with them, use my code and we’ll both get some free time.
  • Had a security problem? Need to recover? How do you know when to hit the big red button? Preston can help.
  • Speaking of doom and gloom (i.e. losing data), Curtis’s recent podcast episode covering ZFS and related technologies made for some great listening.
  • Have you been looking for a “A Unique Technology to Scan and Interrogate Petabyte-Scale Unstructured Data Lakes”? Maybe, maybe not. If you have, Datadobi has you covered with Datadobi Query Language. You can read the press release here.
  • I love when bloggers take the time to do hands-on articles, and this one from Dennis Faucher covering VMware Tanzu Community Edition was fantastic.

Random Short Take #60

Welcome to Random Short take #60.

  • VMware Cloud Director 10.3 went GA recently, and this post will point you in the right direction when it comes to planning the upgrade process.
  • Speaking of VMware products hitting GA, VMware Cloud Foundation 4.3 became available about a week ago. You can read more about that here.
  • My friend Tony knows a bit about NSX-T, and certificates, so when he bumped into an issue with NSX-T and certificates in his lab, it was no big deal to come up with the fix.
  • Here’s everything you wanted to know about creating an external bootable disk for use with macOS 11 and 12 but were too afraid to ask.
  • I haven’t talked to the good folks at StarWind in a while (I miss you Max!), but this article on the new All-NVMe StarWind Backup Appliance by Paolo made for some interesting reading.
  • I loved this article from Chin-Fah on storage fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). I’ve seen a fair bit of it slung about having been a customer and partner of some big storage vendors over the years.
  • This whitepaper from Preston on some of the challenges with data protection and long-term retention is brilliant and well worth the read.
  • Finally, I don’t know how I came across this article on hacking Playstation 2 machines, but here you go. Worth a read if only for the labels on some of the discs.

Brisbane VMUG – October 2018

hero_vmug_express_2011

The October 2018 edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting will be held on Tuesday 23rd October at Toobirds Bistro and Bar (127 Creek Street, Brisbane) from 4:30 – 6:30pm. It’s sponsored by Coevolve and promises to be a top afternoon.

Here’s the agenda:

  • VMUG Introduction
  • VMware Presentation by Michael Francis – Project Dimension & VMC on AWS Technical Demonstration
  • Coevolve Presentation – How to securely transform your network using NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud and Zscaler.
  • Coevolve Demonstration – to show how easy it is to:
    • Build a new branch site on the fly
    • Apply consistent policies across your network; and
    • Integrate NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud with the Zscaler security platform
  • Q&A
  • Light Refreshments.

Coevolve have gone to great lengths to make sure this will be a fun and informative session and I’m really looking forward to it. You can find out more information and register for the event here. I hope to see you there. Also, if you’re interested in sponsoring one of these events, please get in touch with Brisbane VMUG by email (brisbane@vmug.com) and I can help make it happen.

Brisbane VMUG – July 2015

hero_vmug_express_2011

Happy days. The July edition of the Brisbane VMUG will be held on Thursday 23rd July at the Hilton in the city (Room 83, Level 8, 190 Elizabeth Street) from 4 – 6 pm. It’s sponsored by Fortinet.

Here’s the agenda:

  • NSX Overview: Architecture and Integration by VMware;
  • Fortinet Presentation: VMWare NSX and FortiGate VMX Integration;
  • Live (remote) Demonstration of FortiGate VMX on VMware NSX;
  • Open forum discussion,  Q&A;
  • Sponsored lucky door prize (FortiGate firewall); and
  • Food and Refreshments (Available at Venue).

 

You can find out more information and register for the event here. I hope to see you there. Also, if you’re interested in sponsoring one of these events, please get in touch with me and I can help make it happen.