Month: February 2017

TAG Top 40 Innovative Technology Company

/ johannstander / Leave a comment

My company Sovereign Systems was recently named a TAG Top 40 Innovative Technology Company.

We are doing some really cool stuff around Cloud Management Platforms with our SovLabs modules, which provides an end-to-end solution unmatched in the industry.

Check it out!

https://sovlabs.com/

http://www.sovsystems.com/solutions/cmp/

http://www.sovsystems.com/press-release/sovereign-systems-named-a-tag-top-40-innovative-technology-company/

 

 

 

 

VMware did not disappoint! Finally NSX supports vSphere 6.5 and then some…

/ johannstander / Leave a comment

Yesterday VMware released both NSX for vSphere 6.3.o as well as the accompanying  vCenter 6.5a and ESXi 6.5a.

Before upgrading your NSX environment to 6.3 you would need to upgrade your vCenter and ESXi hosts to 6.5a as describe in the KB 2148841

It seems there was a pretty good reasons for VMware holding out on NSX so long since they introduced a lot of great new features with just a fews standouts listed below:

  • NSX kernel modules now independent of ESXi version: This enhancement helps reduce the chance of host upgrades failing due to incorrect kernel module versions since every ESXi upgrade in an NSX environment required at least 2 reboots.
  • Rebootless upgrade and uninstall on hosts: On vSphere 6.0 and later, once you have upgraded to NSX 6.3.0, any subsequent NSX VIB changes will not require a reboot. Instead hosts must enter maintenance mode to complete the VIB change.
  • NSX 6.3.0 also checks for NSX readiness before taking a host out of maintenance mode
  • Controller Disconnected Operation (CDO) mode: A new feature called Controller Disconnected Operation (CDO) mode has been introduced. This mode ensures that data plane connectivity is unaffected when hosts lose connectivity with the controller.
  • Compliance features for FIPS, Common Criteria and ICSA.

  • Improved Layer 2 VPN performance: Performance for Layer 2 VPN has been improved. This allows a single Edge appliance to support up to 1.5 Gb/s throughput, which is an improvement from the previous 750 Mb/s.

  • Linux support for Guest Introspection
  • Better interoperability between vCloud Director 8.20 and NSX 6.3.0 helps service providers offer advanced networking and security services to their tenants. vCD 8.20 with NSX 6.3.0 exposes native NSX capabilities supporting multiple tenants and tenant self-service.  (Very interested to test this and hopefully have a write up in upcoming weeks)

 

Links:

http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/nsx/6.3.0/releasenotes_nsx_vsphere_630.html

https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2148841

http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vsphere/65/vsphere-vcenter-server-650a-release-notes.html

 

 

New HTML5 web client fling 3.2 released

/ johannstander / Leave a comment

VMware just keeps steaming ahead and making great progress with the HTML5 Web client.  There are I really hope to see the HTML5 client have feature parity by end of year with the flash web client.

Here are some of the new standout features.  A complete list of new features, enhancements and bug fixes are available from the fling page.

  • Edit iSCSI Advanced Options
  • Chart for datastore usage by file type
  • Resource utilization charts for VMs, RPs and vApps
  • DRS per-host utilization charts for CPU and Memory
  • Storage DRS recommendations, faults and action history
  • ‘New Distributed Switch’ wizard
  • Remove Distributed Switch
  • Edit VMkernel adapter settings
  • Migrate VM: Added ‘Change storage only’ option
  • Migrate VM: When changing compute resource only, you can now migrate VM networking (‘Select networks page’)
  • Register VM or VM template (from a datastore’s File browser)
  • Remove from inventory a VM or VM template
  • Move a VM to a VM folder or datacenter using ‘Move to’ dialog

Links:

https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vsphere-html5-web-client#changelog