Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

VMware released its Upgrade 3 for vSphere 7 just a couple of days ago. As usual, the update includes a lot of new features, compatibility extensions, etc. Like always, you should approach the upgrade process comprehensively and make all the necessary preparations to conclude the switch as smoothly as possible.

 Azure key-value store services comprise a subset of NoSQL (non-relational) data services for semi-structured data, which offer you a key-value data store. Common use cases would be when you need: simplest and fastest NoSQL data store; fast, high-volume data ingestion; quick read-write operations; or when data structure/number per entity is varied. Sounds complicated, but we’ve laid it all out in simple terms.

Previously, we talked about the new release of Windows 365 and how to deploy it by default. Today, we’re sharing how you can get creative. You can create your own custom Windows 365 deployments by utilizing Azure VM generation 1 and generation 2 images. It might sound daunting, but we’ve broken everything down for you.

Windows Admin Center (WAC) has been elevated to enable the new features and capabilities of Windows Server 2022 (WS2022). WAC is a multi-faceted browser-based management tool that allows integrating WS2022 to the fullest extent possible, covering a wide range of IT infrastructure use cases.

Everything is a bit too complicated when it comes to vSphere, and this feature is no exception. While configuring vSphere clusters, your VMs may need to be accessed by various hosts simultaneously or several VMs in a cluster need to write at once within the same host. Sounds quite routine, but there are several “hoops” to jump through to set that up properly.

vSphere Persistent Memory (PMem) was introduced in vSphere 6.7. It has seen many updates since, up until vSphere 7 U2. It’s a great non-volatile memory technology for super low latency applications that need the best-possible storage with low latency. However, there is much to look out for in terms of support, performance, configuration, and cost.

The IT world is moving ever further into the cloud. Microsoft recently released Windows 365, which is supposed to be a simplified version of Azure Virtual Desktop. It’s marketed as “your PC in the Cloud,” which is mostly operable from Microsoft Endpoint Manager. There are many exciting things to expect from this launch, so you better get into it.

DBeaver is an open-source, free multi-platform database management software. It’s also an SQL client for developers and database administrators that has a user-friendly UI. It can be used as an alternative for MySQL-Workbench and PGAdmin to work with various databases, like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Greenplum, and others.

Azure recently released a Premium SKU (Stock-keeping-Unit) for its Firewall. Although Azure Firewall Premium is not as foolproof as Palo Alto or Checkpoint, it’s been getting more and more upgrades. This version is better-suited for connectivity control, with its new features like TLS inspection, IDPS, Web categories, and URL filtering.