the Sky is the Limit
From November 6th to November 8th 2018 VMworld Europe will take place at the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona. With more than 500 sessions it will be an impressive happening.
For all of you who will attend VMworld for the first time, here are some useful links.
If you’re running a vCenter appliance with Active Directory integration you should take care about your Domain Functional Level. It is crucial to closely work together with the domain administrators team, for some vCenter versions may not support the latest level supported by Windows Server 2016.
Functional levels determine the available Active Directory Domain Services domain capabilities. They also determine which Windows Server operating systems you can run on domain controllers in the domain or forest. Choosing a Functional Level of Windows Server 2012 implies that there can’t be any Domain Controllers prior that level (like Server 2008 R2).
Functional levels do not affect which operating systems you can run on workstations or servers that are joined to the domain.
Set the domain and forest functional levels to the highest value that your environment can support. This way, you can use as many ADS features as possible. Continue reading “vCenter and AD Domain Functional Level”
On October 16th 2018 vSphere 6.7 Update 1 became available. An update we’ve been desperately waiting for. Finally vSphere-Client (HTML5) has become fully functional. Until that some tasks had to be done with the infamous flash client.
Unfortunately problems emerged soon after users updated their clusters to vSphere 6.7 U1 in combination with Veeam Backup jobs.
VMware and Veeam worked hard to identify the root cause of the problem. It turned out that there was a change in the vSphere API which caused communication issues with Veeam Backup.
Latest API version is 6.7.1, but this one seems to be incompatible with Veeam Backup 9.5 U3a. According to Veeam sources, the issue will be settled with the soon to come Veeam Backup Update 4.
For all of those who have already updated their clusters to vSphere 6.7 U1 there’s a workaround. You need to enter a registry key to force Veeam Backup using the older API 6.7.
Warning! This solution is not recommended by Veeam Support. If you’re not yet on vSphere 6.7 U1 and you’re using Veeam Backup, you better wait until release of Veeam Backup 9.5 Update 4. Do not upgrade. Read this passage again!
The workaround outlined below has to be reverted as soon as Veeam 9.5 Update 4 is available.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication
You need to add a multi-string-value (REG_MULTI_SZ). Enter the Value below:
6.7.1 = 6.7
This registry key forces Veeam Backup to use API 6.7, but might lead to other yet unknown problems. But it enables to run your Veeam Backup jobs again.
This is a rather non-technical post about life, the universe and… no, I think that has been written before. 😉
Seriously, it’s about how to deal with the overwhelming mass of information and the lack of knowledge of a single person in the field of virtualization.
When I started my journey into virtualization, it was all about running a virtual machine within another operating system. I can remember the day when I’ve first seen a Windows 2000 booting in a VM on my NT4 workstation. It has been sluggish like hell and animations looked like slideshows. But, hey! What a cool technology!
A bit later I had the opportunity to manage an ESX 2.5 cluster before virtualization became mainstream.
Over the years, many other products were added: HA, DRS, vDS, NIOC, SIOC, SRM, vRealize, View, Horizon, vCOPS, vROPS, NSX, vSAN, Cloud, Containers, IoT, Software-defined-whatever and so on.
It is that kind of technological evolution which makes my work so fascinating and kept me going over the years. Learning new stuff every day is the spice of life and the core reason why I’ve left my labcoat behind, took the red pill and entered the vMatrix. Continue reading “The blind spot”