You didn't mention the type of storage you are using (local, NAS, SAN, distributed, etc.), but are you using VMFS6? This is a pretty good read about automatic unmap - https://blog.purestorage.com/monitoring-automatic-vmfs-6-unmap-in-esxi/.

Image taken from http://geek-whisperers.com/2017/10/the-final-whispers-episode-140/

August 29, 2017 – I was there the day they stopped whispering. It was the day episode 140 was recorded at a podcast booth on the VMworld show floor. In my mind, this had all the makings of a great athlete retiring and would bring about the end of an era. I was fortunate enough to be a part of it.

Getting into Podcasts

The real story begins much earlier in the year. I needed to renew my VCP-DCV 5 before September and had been ramping up to start studying again. But I was also working a job with an hour commute each direction and needed to find a way to create more study time. I started listening to the vBrownBag series of podcasts on the VCP-DCV 6 as I drove to and from work. I would also listen or watch from my desk during part of lunch, before work, or after work.

As I searched for the vBrownBag series in iTunes, I began to see recommendations for other podcasts. One of them was called The Geek Whisperers, and I decided to give it a listen. I don’t remember the first episode I chose, but I feel like it might have been Episode 131 or somewhere close to it. Much like Lay’s potato chips, I couldn’t stop at just one. After listening to the newer episodes, I decided to start from the beginning.

You can read the rest of the story here - http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2017/11/26/the-day-they-stopped-whispering-my-tribute-to-the-geek-whisperers/

In the case of this announcement, it's unilateral (With VMware saying they were not consulted). Considering VMware licensing for hosting providers is a special program and Microsoft is not in it this leads to speculation that...

Yikes - I definitely missed that part of the announcement.

@scottalanmiller said in VMware on Azure?:

@networknerd said in VMware on Azure?:

@scottalanmiller said in VMware on Azure?:

Just what we wanted, a lower quality way to run VMware.

We can still rely on people not speccing out the hardware they use to run VMware correctly.

Yeah, but we had AWS. Azure is just crap.

I've never used Azure to run VMs - only for AD Connect with O365. I've never used AWS to run VMs for that matter either. I've used GCE to spin up a VM as well as Rackspace for some others, but that's it.

@scottalanmiller said in VMware on Azure?:

Just what we wanted, a lower quality way to run VMware.

We can still rely on people not speccing out the hardware they use to run VMware correctly.

There's a ton of goodness in this article, but my favorite part was that they are developing a way to run VMware bare metal in Azure similar to VMware on AWS.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/transforming-your-vmware-environment-with-microsoft-azure/

Youtube Video

Youtube Video

For those who could not make it, here's a post with the links to the recorded sessions from tonight - https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2090834-dfw-spicecorps-11-16-2017-career-night.

The work day is almost over when you’re interrupted with an emergency. A certain time sensitive financial function of one of your information systems isn’t working. As luck would have it, the error is something you’ve never seen. And the business is counting on you to fix it quickly, or this could be a very expensive problem. I found myself in that exact scenario a couple of days ago. But in this case, it was the end user who really saved the day. Keep reading.

The rest of the story can be found here -
http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2017/10/07/when-the-end-user-saves-the-day/

I remember attending the VMUG UserCon in Dallas / Fort Worth for the first time back in 2013 and hearing Damian Karlson speak about vBrownBag. At the time I had never heard of vBrownBag, but one thing that really hit me was his mention of community. When he said “the community” he meant the virtualization community. He encouraged folks to get on Twitter to participate. To me, that was completely preposterous because Spiceworks was “the community.” That might sound a little closed minded considering I was at a VMUG event, so let’s start with my community background up to this point.

It Started with One Installation

For me, Spiceworks was where it all began and will always feel like home. I joined the Spiceworks community in December 2010, which is when I first installed the application and began using it for ticketing. A friend from church (now my current boss) told me about it. I mostly used the app and didn’t pay much attention to the community, not really knowing much about it or how to use it.

But because I had installed the app and registered a community account (where the NetworkNerd name was born), I got notified about a local group of IT Professionals called SpiceCorps. It was free to attend, so I decided to go. At this first meeting in particular, I got to meet David Babbitt, one of the developers who worked at Spiceworks. He was in the area to get feedback on some new product features and to take any questions attendees had. I remember picking his brain about using Spiceworks for our Maintenance department in addition to just for IT. I thought it was so exciting to get to meet someone who worked at Spiceworks.

You can read the rest of the story here: http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2017/11/18/the-power-of-finding-your-community/

If these were my servers, I would want to see bandwidth usage too, especially if the cloud provider is charging me for it. The PRTG approach looks like a really good option.

I've heard good things about Sensu as well.

But no matter what you use, you need to be able to know what normal operation (performance, capacity, utilization) is like across the servers so you will truly know if the behavior you see is an outlier or expected behavior (i.e. a SQL VM spikes in CPU and memory usage because there are a ton of queries running for order inserts at the end of the day, etc.).

Hopefully some Mango folks can come. I edited the description in Spiceworks to add the fact that we'll have a recruiter coming to share some tips on how to sell yourself to potential employers and beat the applicant tracking systems.

@scottalanmiller said in Who Is Reading What You Write SAMIT IT:

@jmoore said in Who Is Reading What You Write SAMIT IT:

@scottalanmiller said in Who Is Reading What You Write SAMIT IT:

@jmoore said in Who Is Reading What You Write SAMIT IT:

Good points. Hopefully we all do this to some degree

I'm pretty sure we don't all I've read so many things where people outright claim that they refuse to do their jobs or are intentionally screwing their company that I'm pretty sure that they are banking 100% that their boss would never read the thread. I often invite people to have their owners or CEOs read threads that people disagree with me on and if their CEO agrees, that I'd digress. In all these years, I've never once been taken up on a management review.

Well I like to be optimistic!

I've even offered free consulting, that I'd come in and talk to management just because I was passionate about getting good advice out there.

Also, no takers.

It's all about the passion. People can see that.

@scottalanmiller said in Who Is Reading What You Write SAMIT IT:

@networknerd said in Who Is Reading What You Write SAMIT IT:

Those are great points, Scott. In my case I already know the boss reads my blog, but I completely understand the need to think about the audience (as in really step back and think about who might read the content). And in some cases, your boss may not want you sharing as much detail as you have in a post so as to not give too much away about the company's infrastructure.

This is one of my favorite SAM IT videos.

That too. Great that the boss does read it, but also important to remember that he is there when writing it

Yep - folks are probably not paid to blog at work.

Those are great points, Scott. In my case I already know the boss reads my blog, but I completely understand the need to think about the audience (as in really step back and think about who might read the content). And in some cases, your boss may not want you sharing as much detail as you have in a post so as to not give too much away about the company's infrastructure.

This is one of my favorite SAM IT videos.

I think your backup and recovery strategy is part of the architecture @scottalanmiller described above as well. Maybe it's more like selecting the type of house insurance you need based on the way the house was architected, the area in which you live and the environmental risks, how much coverage you need, and how difficult you want the process to be to get the house rebuilt in a disaster. That was the best analogy I could come up with off the top of my head, so let me know if there's a better way to state it.

DPACK gives you insight as to whether your backups are negatively impacting the overall system performance and if you need more performance out of your production systems to account for it. So if your RPO has become a bit tighter, you will need to run backups more frequently to account for this. Can the system you have architected handle that load so your applications run well, and can you both backup and restore to hit your RTO with your current backup infrastructure's performance?

Someone on Spiceworks who had recently downloaded the firmware was able to send it to me (wipes sweaty brow) just so folks who read this will know. I appreciate the help.

And yes, @scottalanmiller , this kind of thing is all too common these days. I don't like it, but it doesn't change the situation at hand I'm afraid.

If there are any kind souls out there willing to help me obtain the latest autonomous IOS firmware for some Cisco Aeronet 1600 series access points, I entreat you.

The firmware we need to protect against WPA2 vulnerabilities is listed below, but yes, you guessed it, the gear is not under a support contract. If someone out there would be so kind as to download it and PM me a Dropbox link to download it, I would greatly appreciate it.

I realize this is not a good situation. Just know that the situation surrounding the gear being out of support is a result of decisions which were not ours.

The specific file should be ap1g2-k9w7-tar.153-3.JF1.tar.

One of the best things to do is get up and move, even if it is going for a walk. And let your mind wander, whether you listen to music or a podcast or nothing at all. Manual labor is pretty freeing as well when you are under some stress. Get out in the yard and trim a few trees or dig those holes to put new plants in the landscaping, etc. Learning new things is fun for me too, but nothing relives stress as much as movement / some kind of exercise. Otherwise everything gets tense, and I eventually am going to move wrong and tweak my back.