Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

VMware Imager allows automating the process of building Windows 10 virtual machines. Instead of setting up a Golden VM image, you can choose the desired features in Imager and set off the pipeline. This eases the admin routine, reducing reliance on a specific task and human errors. You can stop the process at any stage and tweak stuff, too.

With NVMe SSDs quickly erupting as the desired storage standard, common RAID technology isn’t able to provide any longer. StarWind, being ahead of IT infrastructure trends, has already solved this bottleneck. Empowered with GRAID  SupremeRAID™, the world’s first NVMe-oF RAID card, and StarWind SAN&NAS SDS, StarWind Backup Appliance unleashes the entire potential of NVMe for both backup performance and backup data security.

SexiGraph is open-source community-based software for monitoring vSphere, including V7 U3, vSAN and its APIs. The project leverages a Grafana frontend and is very fast at providing all kinds of vSphere-related data in an appealing visual format. Definitely worth checking out if you want VMware environment data quick and easy on the eyes.

VMware Dynamic Environment Manager (DEM) is used to manage profile settings for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) users. The tool is designed for VMware Horizon and has a wide range of functions, among which there’s a handy ability to retain customizations and files of a user in their VD profile while storing them in a File Server.

Azure Data Explorer is a powerful software for real-time analysis of large volumes of streamed data. However, it can be used for data storage as well, and it’s cheaper than Microsoft Sentinel. Additionally, the service is useful if you want to query logs with Kusto Query Language (KQL), which is also available for Azure Log Analytics.

The virtualization world keeps on driving at full speed. VMware recently released a big pack of upgrades to its Tools. Among others, the most interesting updates relate to certain critical vulnerabilities, support for new guest OS products, and, what’s really nice, backward compatibility capabilities with older VMware products.

Connecting Azure Active Directory (AD) joined VMs to Azure Virtual Desktop (VD) is a sure-fire way to simplify environment operation in your VDI. This way, you can skip your Azure VMs having line-of-sight of on-prem or virtualized AD Domain Controller (DC), deploying AD Domain Services, and sometimes its can even remove the need for DC entirely. Less complication, more efficiency.

There are many “moving parts” to cybersecurity, among which, encryption is on the frontline. Previously, you’d have to use a third-party key management solution to facilitate security in a vSphere environment. Now, you can use Native Key Provider to integrate vSAN encryption, VM encryption, and virtual Trusted Platform Modules (vTPM).

VMware App Volumes is a software solution meant to deliver ready-to-use apps right to the users’ VMs, providing them with instant access to the required application. Formerly belonging to the CloudVolumes, it was released as the part of VMware Horizon line to decouple package management and delivery. Packaging once and deploying everywhere, VMware App Volumes brings the user experience to the whole new level.