VMware aims to deliver quality and value in vSphere 6.5

A few months before VMworld 2016, we produced a wish list for the features of vSphere 6.5. Now that VMware has officially announced vSphere 6.5, does it meet expectations?

In June I wrote about the features I wanted to see in vSphere 6.5 in the hope that a new version of the flagship VMware software would be announced at VMworld 2016 US Unfortunately, Of vSphere to VMworld 2016 Europe, and with it, a number of new features. So, did VMware deliver the things asked for?

In my original article, I asked for the scale-out vCenter; VMware gave us a vCenter failover function. I also requested a cluster of vCenter servers that would distribute the servers between the servers, and I wanted the cluster to provide instant failover if a node encountered a problem. It was a fairly large request, so I'm not entirely surprised that I did not get what I wanted. What we got is a two-node failover cluster for vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) in which one node is active while the other node is in standby. If the active node has an abnormality, the queued node takes its identity and starts the vCenter Services. According to VMware, the failover will take a few minutes, approximately the same amount of time as the cluster vSphere High Availability (HA) would take to recover the failing VM. This two-node failover cluster is essentially the replacement for the old vCenter Server Heartbeat product, as far as I know, nothing more. This is a beginning, but not exactly what I wanted in the new version.

I wanted to integrate VMware Update Manager (VUM) into vCSA and, in this case, VMware delivered. This means that you do not need an additional Windows server and database; Everything is built into one device. This feature is long been late, one that we have been expecting since it was released for the first time. The delay only made it more welcome in vSphere 6.5. The new integrated vCSA HA and VUM are signs that VMware is committed to vCSA and that company is very serious about moving clients out of vCSA from Windows to vCSA.

When writing my vSphere 6.5 wish list, I asked for a better product. Of course we will not be able to judge the quality of vSphere 6.5 until it has been in the hands of users for a few months. At present, there is no commitment to a ship date for any of the products advertised to VMworld in the US or Europe. VMware will likely deliver the new version of vSphere in the coming months.

VCP550D Exam Question No 59

Question No 59:

A vSphere administrator has created a Virtual SAN Cluster with Automatic Mode Disk Groups. The cluster includes three ESXi hosts contributing one SSD and six SAS disks each. The administrator has four new ESXi hosts that boot from a fiber channel array and have no local disks attached. These four new hosts need additional shared storage but there is insufficient space on the fiber channel array. The hardware budget is limited. What can the administrator do to provide the needed storage for the lowest cost?

A. Add the four new hosts to the Virtual SAN Cluster and use the existing storage in the cluster.
B. Add an SAS RAID controller to each of the new hosts. Attach one SSD and six SAS disks to each RAID controller and then add the four hosts to the Virtual SAN cluster.
C. Add the four new hosts to the Virtual SAN Cluster and contribute the fiber channel disks to the Virtual SAN.
D. Add the four new hosts to the Virtual SAN Cluster and change to Manual Mode Disk Groups.

Answer: A

VMware boss Pat Gelsinger tackles life after Dell buyout

Pat Gelsinger is not your usual CEO of Silicon Valley. A committed Christian who almost entered the church rather than technology, is given 40pc of their salary, praying and singing hymns on travel from his office in California at the airport early and resolved not to read his newspaper Read the Bible.

At this point, everything that everyone wants to hear is like the CEO of VMware, the technology group US $ 32 billion (US $ 26.2 billion) capitalization, says Michael Dell.

Portable eponyms maker Dell just paid $ 67 billion for EMC, the US group that owns 80pc of VMware, and 10,000 followed during the conference VMworld Europe in Barcelona this month were interested in the way the duo gel .

Gelsinger, after all, is a technocrat who has worked for 30 years at Intel, becoming director of technology, while Dell, Business, founded the company PC at his home in Austin, Texas.

"We get along very well," insists Gelsinger, 54 years old. "We just had our first board meeting with Michael as the new chairman of my board and I would say, in general, so it's early and I do 'T that one of us would think it was, however, all the signs are encouraging.

"We are committed to creating synergies of one billion, then we have to start building organizations to materialize." This warning is typical minimum Gelsinger approach. More Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, which is grounded, nice and polite.

What are your impressions of your new boss so far? He is pleased that Dell has declared its support for the distribution of VMware partner ecosystem even more important for the company for the VMworld Las Vegas.

He thinks Dell was impressed by the crowd of 25,000 spectators at the event - more than double the participants in the annual shindigs EMC or Dell. There are many things to do for Dell. EMC was an unusual company with a portfolio strategy entities owned power companies, such as VMware and Pivotal, jointly owned with Microsoft, General Electric and Ford and directed by Paul Maritz, formerly divided Microsoft and VMware.

"Michael has quite acquired that strategy," Gelsinger said. "Certainly, it includes a software company like VMware is a different society, a different culture.

"People in the software are different people who make up the team and the supply chain. There is no advantage in a company from another software. This is a key aspect of managing a company like ours, and we consider a very successful business.

"This gives us the space and support to go out and execute what we have to do. And it has a lot to do by the merger of Dell and EMC. There are 140 000 people to be there, large product lines to merge and organizations that are .

The name is synonymous with VMware technology "virtual machine software" that essentially allows companies to package their data much smaller number of server computers. The company recently made important alliances with the head of cloud computing Amazon and IBM. Retains its listing after shooting.

"I am pleased to see shareholders every 90 days," Gelsinger smiles. However, VMware's shares have halved from $ 80 to a minimum of $ 43 after the announcement of the agreement. "It was a very painful process," he said.

"Clearly there is concern about whether Dell could make a successful software company." There were questions about values track that was part of the takeover and the implications of that. As with any large acquisition, there were also concerns about whether the deal would be done. "


There were also questions about the activities of VMware because the advice he gave in profits last year were lower than Wall Street expected. However, the share price has increased as companies were close to an agreement.

"We have been able to establish that the market ecosystem and VMware continue to independence and that some of the new product areas and cloud strategy we put in place have helped to solve some of the problems," Gelsinger said.

"With stocks now around £ 77, yet we are negotiating in multiple software we should have, so we are not completely through the fog. But we have come a long way and I think it is a big mouth."

Gelsinger, who chairs the Bay Transformation with Christ, a group for "spiritual and social" in the San Francisco area changes, clearly managed by VMware with the same kind of missionary zeal.

He speaks of the "digital transformation" and how some of the world leading companies simplify their IT infrastructure to innovate at a faster pace. With mechanical devices designed to overcome the efforts focused on humans for the year 2019, it is estimated that many companies are still not at all prepared for the imminent explosion of the Internet of things.

He also argues that the technology sector is still in its "adolescence", with huge tensions between control and freedom. Half of the largest technology companies in the US has been in ten years, because of these and other difficulties, he believes.

Nokia, BlackBerry and Yahoo are three brands of computers whose star has fallen considerably since predicted the main industry of killing in The Daily Telegraph three years ago, when the British designer of computer chips and of course ARM EMC has taken summer.

VMware, however, has been an excellent investment for EMC. Founded by Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum her husband with his colleagues in California in 1998, was bought by EMC, six years after £ 625m.

In 2007, EMC launched the company on the New York Stock Exchange, which retains a 80pc. Maritz replaced as CEO Greene, quadrupling its revenue to $ 4.5 billion. Gelsinger then the left Maritz EMC to succeed in 2012.

VMware now has 400,000 customers, 19,000 employees, 2015 revenues of $ 6.6 billion and 120 locations worldwide, including its headquarters in the UK in Frimley, Surrey. Gelsinger grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania.

His father was one of nine children, while his mother was from a family of 11 and jumped the last year of high school at age 17 to take a scholarship to study electronics in the technical Lincoln Institute in his home state.

His faith increasing clarity. a weekly Bible study at home headed for 16 years and served as a Sunday school teacher, while his philanthropy supports medical aid organizations, church planting, educational work and an orphanage he and Linda woman helped build in Nairobi.

At Intel, he joined the Institute, who often worked 80 hours a week, prompting complaints from the payroll was working too much overtime.

To solve this, he and Linda have designed a system which would score two points if he returned home before 17h, a time before 18:15 and after a zero point less to be absent in weekends.

He even wrote about it in a book entitled Balancing family, faith and work. "I wrote three books and now I'm working in my room," smiled Gelsinger. This is one of those works of love. "As is the fusion of course. Watch this space.

VCP550D Exam Question No 58

Question No 58:

An administrator has configured a vSphere 5.5 test environment to evaluate the Virtual SAN feature using Automatic Mode Disk Groups. The administrator needs to disable the Virtual SAN cluster while preserving the virtual machines running on that cluster. The administrator has already installed a vSphere 5.5 Client on a Windows 7 desktop and also has access to the vSphere 5.5 Web Client. What should the administrator do to disable the Virtual SAN? 

A. Use Storage vMotion to migrate the virtual machines to another datastore then use the vSphere 5.5 Client to disable the Virtual SAN.
B. Use Storage vMotion to migrate the virtual machines to another datastore then use the vSphere 5.5 Web Client to disable the Virtual SAN.
C. Use the vSphere 5.5 Client to disable the Virtual SAN, which will automatically migrate the virtual machines via the Storage DRS feature.
D. Use the vSphere 5.5 Web Client to disable the Virtual SAN, which will automatically migrate the virtual machines via the Storage DRS feature.

Answer: B