Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Call to action: Register for VMworld 2020!

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By now everyone has probably heard that VMworld is a virtual event this year. I am looking forward to it, as it means many people who were never able to “attend” VMworld sessions, can now attend/watch/learn! This year we have a 2-day event, which is taking the “follow the sun” approach with content scheduled across all timezones, and of course, there will be the option to watch recordings as well.

I am currently preparing my sessions, I have two sessions scheduled. The two sessions I have scheduled currently are:

    • vSAN 7.0: A Platform for both Virtual Machine and Containerized Workloads [HCI1814] – Duncan Epping & Cormac Hogan
    • Change Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone: My Take 3 Journey [ETPD1043] – Duncan Epping

I want to point out that the event is free to attend for everyone, but for those who would like to have access guided hands-on-labs, 1:1’s with experts, roundtable discussions, and much more, there is a paid pass of $ 299,- available as well. There’s only a limited number of the passes available, so if you are interested make sure to register for that asap. More detail on this is available here.

Last, but not least, this year you can filter on “distinguished” speakers. These are the speakers who spoke at two consecutive VMworld events in a row, had more than 150 people at their session, and scored a 4.2 out of 5 or higher. It is a list of 61 speakers, and I am honored to be part of it. I would highly recommend the content that will be presented by these speakers, as satisfaction is (almost) guaranteed!

I hope to see you all (online) at VMworld 2020!

Update on the Kidspire fundraiser!

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About 10 days ago I posted a blog about my 12 year milestone at VMware. In the post, I asked for people in the VMware/Virtualization/Cloud community to consider sharing my request and/or consider donating even. VMware provided me the opportunity to donate ~3100 to a charity of choice. As mentioned, I added a personal donation and asked if people would consider contributing. I think it is fair to say it was a huge success. I would like to thank everyone for sharing my blog and tweets, and especially thank everyone who took the time to donate whatever they could. Whether it is 5 dollars or 500 dollars, every single contribution is much appreciated by the Kidspire team and myself.

So what was the result?

Yes, a total combined of 10k+ across the three efforts. (My grant and donation, Gofundme, Brightfunds.) This means that Kidspire can buy ~45 new Chromebooks for 3 orphanages, which is amazing. Again, thanks to everyone for contributing, it is much appreciated, and I will make sure to share some pictures when Kidspire visits Vietnam again to deliver the Chromebooks and sets up the new classrooms. If you haven’t gotten around to it, the fundraising campaigns are still open. I will close them at the end of the month, so there’s still time left to donate if you want. Thanks!

Fundraising for Kidspire Vietnam to enable chromebook refreshes for orphanages in Vietnam, please help!

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On the first of July, I reached my 12-year milestone with VMware. Looking back I think one of my most memorable experiences was my trip to Vietnam to help setup computer classrooms for various orphanages. When reaching the 12-year milestone each VMware employee gets a substantial amount to donate to a charity of choice. I decided to donate to Kidspire Vietnam as I know there are various classrooms that are up for a hardware refresh since I visited. With my milestone donation, and a personal donation, I have been able to provide sufficient funds to enable Kidspire Vietnam to refresh a single full classroom (15 Chromebooks) in one orphanage.

With this fundraiser, I am hoping to enable Kidspire Vietnam to refresh at least one more additional classroom in one of the orphanages they support. The cost of a refresh is between 3500 USD and 4000 USD. Hopefully, we will be able to reach this goal, but to be honest, Kidspire can use all the help they can get! Believe me when I say that nothing beats seeing how much these kids enjoy learning new technology, and are able to interact with people (and distant family) over the internet, these technology classes makes them feel they matter.

I would like to thank everyone for donating, or considering to donate. Any amount you can spare is appreciated, but is does seem GoFundMe has a 5 USD minimum unfortunately. If you are a VMware employee, I would like to ask you to consider to donate via our VMware Foundation Portal (login first!!) so that your donation is matched by VMware automatically! Note that all donations will go directly to Kidspire Vietnam, I do not hold the funds, the fundraiser is created in such a way that all proceeds will go directly to where they belong.

Thanks,

Duncan

Upgrading to vSphere 7.0b and not sure what the 7.0bs image is?

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Are you upgrading to vSphere 7.0b and not sure what the difference is between 7.0b and 7.0bs? Well that isn’t strange, I had the same problem. I asked around internally and after a bunch of email exchanges, I was informed that the vSphere 7.0bs image is “security updates only”. After I brought it up the team has since quickly modified the release notes to include the following:

Name and Version Release Date Category Detail
ESXi 7.0b – 16324942 06/16/2020 Enhancement Security and Bugfix image
ESXi 7.0bs – 16321839 06/16/2020 Enhancement Security only image

Like I said on twitter if you didn’t know, now you know!

VCG Notification demo and Changing the Default vSAN Policy Demo

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I created two youtube video last week which I just wanted to share with everyone. In these demo’s I am showing the new VCG Notification option. The VCG Notification option is very useful for customers who want to be notified via email when a change to a component of a ready node configuration has occurred. This could be a change in support, change of driver / firmware etc.

Another demo that I recorded was around how to change the default policy for a vSAN Cluster. This seems to be an option that many folks haven’t been able to find in the UI. It is pretty straight forward, hence I am sharing it here.