vSphere Tanzu is a product suite that brings container management to the VMware environment. In this post, we'll detail different Tanzu editions from VMware: Tanzu Basic, Tanzu Standard, and Tanzu Advanced.

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The key difference between Docker and Podman lies in architectural design. Docker's design is a client-server-based design, whereas Podman excludes the daemon dependency.

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VMware implemented containers with VMware Integrated Containers (VIC) back in early 2019. Shortly afterward, VMware Tanzu was released, which significantly improved container management. This post gives an overview of the container technology from a VMware admin's point of view.

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Until now, with each new version of Windows Server LTSC, Microsoft released a corresponding version of the free Hyper-V Server. However, this will no longer be the case with Windows Server 2022. Instead, Microsoft now directs users to Azure Stack HCI.

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With ESXi 7.0 Update 2, VMware has introduced a new way to boot the ESXi installer by using native UEFI HTTP. What is it? It is a way to boot the ESXi installer over the network but without setting up the whole PXE infrastructure (PXE server, TFTP, and DHCP).

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VMware vSphere 7 Update 2 has introduced a new feature called Precision Time for Windows. It's a completely new protocol that is worth looking at because it offers strict time accuracy and precision for time-sensitive virtualized applications.

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Creating custom ESXi images is useful when you need to add custom drivers to your installation ESXi ISO. Previously, there were third-party tools that are no longer maintained. However, since vSphere 6.x, VMware has offered its own utility, which is built into vSphere, called ESXi Image Builder.

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VMware HCI mesh for compute-only nodes was introduced with vSphere 7.0 Update 2 and allows you to connect to VMware vSAN datastores from another cluster. This cluster can be a host-only cluster without internal storage participating in a vSAN capacity.

The post VMware vSphere 7.0 Update 2 HCI Mesh configuration first appeared on 4sysops.

VMware vSphere 7 Update 2 finally offers a long-awaited Native Key Provider (NKP), which is built in in vSphere. It's not a "full blown" KMS server, as the NKP can only talk to vSphere and you can't point other things at it. It is a vSphere-only feature.

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VMware vRealize Log Insight gathers logs from ESXi hosts and VMs in your virtual and physical environments. The product is extensible via content packs available in the VMware marketplace. In this post, we'll show you how you can not only use it as a main collector for your infrastructure, but also how to use the content pack for Microsoft Windows.

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If you're running just a vSphere, and ESXi, the logging will be concentrated only from those two products. VMware has, however, a large portfolio of products, each of which has its own logging. It is probably best to send logs from all VMware products to a remote logging server that can ingest the logs and present you with a graphical UI that also allows advanced search capabilities for specific issues.

The post Analyze basic log output from VMware vSphere 7 products first appeared on 4sysops.

DRS Dump Insight is a portal where you can upload drmdump files for further analysis. VMware DRS Dump Insight 2.0 is an updated release that reflects changes within the VMware DRS mechanism, which I discussed in a previous article about VMware vSphere 7 DRS scoring and configuration.

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This guide provides information about BIOS optimization for VMware ESXi 7.x. When you buy new hardware, after verifying that ESXi 7.x is a supported hypervisor, you'll need to configure BIOS. The configuration process is, in part, about performance tweaks.

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The Virtual Machine Compute Optimizer (VMCO) is a free tool from the VMware Flings site at flings.vmware.com that enables you to capture information about the hosts and VMs running in your vSphere environment. It generates a report on your VMs and shows you whether your VMs are optimized. It takes the configuration of the host's memory and CPU into consideration.

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VMware vSphere 7 High Availability (HA) advanced options are useful when you need to provide specific networking due to local network requirements or you need to change some uncommon behavior.

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If you have to create several identical VMs that deviate significantly from the wizard's defaults in the Hyper-V Manager, it results in a lot of manual work. Alternatively, PowerShell offers cmdlets for this purpose that can add and configure virtual hardware, such as network adapters or VHDs.

The post Creating and configuring a virtual machine completely with PowerShell (using Azure Stack HCI as an example) first appeared on 4sysops.

It has long been the best practice to use a separate desktop environment to perform risky activities, such as Internet browsing, opening files from the Internet, or performing other sensitive activities. While, in theory, VMs provide an excellent answer for this use case, they can be cumbersome and challenging to manage in practice. Hysolate is a solution that effectively streamlines the use of a separate VM environment for risky activities.

The post Hysolate: Isolate risky end-user activities in a virtual machine first appeared on 4sysops.

Azure Stack HCI is Microsoft's preferred platform for configuring hyperconverged clusters. Windows Admin Center contains a wizard that can set up the entire environment based on a bare OS installation on the nodes. This also includes software-defined storage with S2D.

The post Create a hyperconverged infrastructure with Azure Stack HCI and Windows Admin Center first appeared on 4sysops.

VMware vSphere 7 has networking policies that can be applied to both vSphere Standard Switch (VSS) and vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS).

The post VMware vSphere 7 Networking Policies configuration first appeared on 4sysops.