Author Archives: Tim

Cohesity DataPlatform 6.5.1c LTS Is Here!

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Cohesity has just announced the (LTS) Long Term Supported release of their DataPlatform version 6.5.1c. It is now available for Cohesity customers to upgrade their clusters and gain all the added benefits of the new LTS version. Below is the list of the added features and enhancements for both (GA) Generally Available and Tech Preview features.

(GA) Generally Available Features:

  • Backup/Recover to secondary VMware network
  • VMware VM Recovery with Copy Recovery
  • File Level Recovery with VMware Tools
  • NetApp DataProtect Volume Backup
  • NFS/SMB Encryption Support for NAS Backups
  • Blacklist IPs for NAS Protection Groups
  • Download NAS Backup Error Logs
  • NAS Backup with File DataLock
  • NAS Exclusions – Regular Expression Patterns
  • MegaFile Restore Support for Physical Agents
  • Auto Upgrade Agents after Cluster Upgrade
  • Protect All Local Volumes
  • Parallel File/Folder Data Protection
  • Fault Tolerance – New 6:2/8:2 (EC) Erasure Coding Configurations
  • Account/Security Related:
    • “Cohesity” User Account No Longer Used
    • Removed Bash SSH Access to Accounts
    • Both SSH/Remote Logins are Disabled by Default
    • “root” User Access from the Physical Console Removed
    • Support Account:
      • No User Account Anymore
      • Now Uses “User Security Token” Which Cohesity Support Needs to Connect to Your Cluster via the Remote Tunnel
      • Can be set to On/Off/Temporary for a Set Amount of Time
      • Only Cohesity Employees Can Access the Remote Tunnel
      • If Password Forgotten, Support Must be Contacted to Change Password
    • (2) Person Rule:
      • Cohesity Administrator Enables It
      • Password Set by a Different Cohesity Administrator – The First Administrator Does Not Set the Password
      • Administrator Controls the “sudo ” Access
    • a
  • Oracle:
    • Backup with “sysbackup” Privilege
    • Backup Support for TDE Databases
    • Pfile Control via UI During Restore/Clone
    • Log Backup Archival & PIT Restore from Archive
  • AWS:
    • Specify VPC for Fleet on Source Registration
    • AWS Cloud Edition – Deployment Using IAM Roles & Source/External Target Registration
  • Azure:
    • Filter Users Based on Azure Attributes
    • Use Incremental APIs for Managed Disk VMs
    • Support for Hyper-V Gen2 VMs
  • Cohesity Cloud Edition – Cost Optimization with XL Node
  • Next Generation User Interface Enhancements:
    • Quick Protect & Quick Policy
    • One-Time Protect
    • Dashboard Enhancements with Heat Maps
    • Metrics on Data Transferred to External Targets
    • A New Health Dashboard
    • Password Management Enhancements
  • Multi-Tenancy:
    • Enable “Restricted Access to Specific Object” Workflow for Organization User
    • Guardrail for Supported Workload
    • Protected Objects Heatmap Report for Tenants
    • Restore to vCloud Director Storage Profile
    • Support for VMware’s VCD version 10.1
    • VMware’s VCD Plug-In – Cross Launch to Cohesity Web GUI
    • Support for VMware’s vRealize Automation Workflows
  • SmartFiles (NAS):
    • Intent Based Views
    • SMB SuperUser Account
    • Audit Log – Filer Tab
    • NIS Support
    • External NAS Tiering – Uptiering
  • Hardware:
    • Cohesity C6055 with 16TB Drive Support
    • Cohesity “Compute” Nodes – For Use With NoSQL & Hadoop Only
      • Cohesity (VE) Virtual Edition
      • Cisco UCS C220 M5
      • HPE DL360
      • Dell R640
      • (BYOH) Bring Your Own Hardware (check for hardware requirements)
    • Cohesity CX8405 Nodes – Support for 15.3TB Drives
    • Cisco UCS S3260 – 14TB Drive Integration
    • Cisco UCS C220 M5 – 4TB Drive Integration
    • Fujitsu RX2540 M5
    • (ROBO) Remote Office Branch Office Node – Dell R640

Tech Preview Features:

  • Support for SAN transport (Fibre channel or iSCSI) for VMware backups
  • NAS Backup with File DataLock
  • SharePoint Online Backups
  • Oracle:
    • VLAN Selection
    • Backup Databases on Windows Servers
    • SAP on Oracle Using BRTOOLs
  • SQL:
    • Exclude a SQL DB from a Protection Group
    • Resume Recovery After Fail
  • NoSQL & Hadoop Adapters
  • Automated Deployment of Cohesity Agent
  • DataProtection Continuity Across Cohesity Clusters

As always, we highly recommend that you lock down your Cohesity clusters using our Security Whitepaper and Hardening Guide to ensure you are protected as best as possible against Ransomware and other malicious attacks!

NOTE: The below links require you to have a Cohesity account to log into either the Cohesity Documents site.

Cohesity DataPlatform Security Whitepaper: https://docs.cohesity.com/HomePage/PDFs/Cohesity-White-Paper-Security-DataPlatform.pdf

Cohesity Security Hardening Guide: https://docs.cohesity.com/HomePage/PDFs/Cohesity-Best-Practice-Security-Hardening.pdf

6.5.1c Release Notes: https://docs.cohesity.com/6_5_1/Web/UserGuide/Content/ReleaseNotes/ReleaseNotesIntro.htm?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTVdWbE5tRTFOakkxWkdFeSIsInQiOiJGT25wdFUzSTY5QmRMaGk1VXozRDUreWJOZ0o4ZmZhbWg2NzhSeU5UNVpCR2lTUThEZFZLXC9XQ3BCdDhaRlR1V1VjSk1POHMrWlFGb2hvYWRSYkJ1akRnbmgwbjl5UE5wQm5hNlJjRU9vYWltNmdZS1I2RkdUb0wzT0V5Mko1dEgifQ%3D%3D

Release Notes (What’s New): https://docs.cohesity.com/6_5_1/Web/UserGuide/Content/ReleaseNotes/WhatsNew.htm?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTVdWbE5tRTFOakkxWkdFeSIsInQiOiJGT25wdFUzSTY5QmRMaGk1VXozRDUreWJOZ0o4ZmZhbWg2NzhSeU5UNVpCR2lTUThEZFZLXC9XQ3BCdDhaRlR1V1VjSk1POHMrWlFGb2hvYWRSYkJ1akRnbmgwbjl5UE5wQm5hNlJjRU9vYWltNmdZS1I2RkdUb0wzT0V5Mko1dEgifQ%3D%3D

Upgrading to 6.5.1c: https://docs.cohesity.com/6_5_1/Web/UserGuide/Content/ReleaseNotes/Upgrade.htm?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTVdWbE5tRTFOakkxWkdFeSIsInQiOiJGT25wdFUzSTY5QmRMaGk1VXozRDUreWJOZ0o4ZmZhbWg2NzhSeU5UNVpCR2lTUThEZFZLXC9XQ3BCdDhaRlR1V1VjSk1POHMrWlFGb2hvYWRSYkJ1akRnbmgwbjl5UE5wQm5hNlJjRU9vYWltNmdZS1I2RkdUb0wzT0V5Mko1dEgifQ%3D%3D

Upgrade Considerations: https://docs.cohesity.com/6_5_1/Web/UserGuide/Content/ReleaseNotes/Upgrade.htm?tocpath=Release%20Notes%7C_____3#UpgradeConsiderations

Cohesity Announces SiteContinuity (Automated DR)

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On September 28, 2020 Cohesity announced Cohesity SiteContinuity, an automated disaster recovery solution that is integrated with the company’s backup and continuous data protection capabilities — making it the only web-scale, converged solution to protect applications across tiers, service levels, and locations on a single platform.

NOTE: (GA) General Availability will be in version 6.6 which will be released potentially in December 2020.

Cohesity is making this announcement as organizations are concerned about losing data to ransomware attacks, natural disasters, or human error. This new integrated solution will help companies ensure data isn’t lost, applications are available, costs are reduced — by eliminating redundant or unnecessary infrastructure — and that strict service-level agreements (SLAs) are met.

SiteContinuity uses our existing (CDP) Continuous Data Protection feature to deliver near-zero (RPOs) Recovery Point Objectives for your mission-critical virtual machines. Near-zero RPOs means every change and every I/O is protected, and in the case of disaster, minimizing your data loss and downtime.

Leveraging vSphere APIs for I/O filtering (VAIO), Cohesity intercepts I/Os between the protected VM and its underlining storage. This approach captures changes and helps reconstructing a copy of your VM directly on
Cohesity. As a journal-based solution, Cohesity maintains a journal of all I/Os received from the VM. Built-in intelligence allows the periodic consolidation of log deltas and the foundational VMDK. The implication: fullyhydrated recovery points, at any point in time—ensuring near-zero RPOs and rapid RTOs.

Continuous Data Protection (CDP) ensures that you recover all of your data, not just most of it. CDP delivers real-time protection for VMware vSphere virtual machines, augmenting your existing snapshot-backups data
protection strategy.

The CDP Solution offers:

  • Enterprise-class data resiliency
  • Operational simplicity with high fault tolerance
  • Efficient flexibility

Cohesity’s SiteContinuity converged backup and disaster recovery solution provides:

  • Simplified Operations:  Consolidate backup, continuous data protection and automated disaster recovery on a single platform, managed through one global UI and a unified policy framework, across application tiers, service levels, and environments.
  • Near-zero Application Downtime and Data Loss:  With just a few clicks, automatically orchestrate failover and failback of a single application or an entire site, ensuring minimum data loss and downtime as business applications are rapidly recovered in a disaster scenario.
  • Flexible Recovery:  Journal-based recovery helps to meet varying service levels across application tiers by restoring to any point in time — including days or even seconds before the disaster hit, on-premises or to the public cloud.
  • Machine Learning-Based Ransomware Detection and Recommendation: At the time of failover and/or restore, Cohesity Helios’ machine learning algorithm helps identify a clean point in time to restore. This helps protect the DR site from malware impact during the failover process.
  • Disaster Testing:  Meet DR compliance objectives with confidence through end-to-end automated non-disruptive disaster recovery testing, including complete audit trail reporting.
  • Reduced TCO:  Reduce costs by converging backup and DR, eliminating the need for separate point products and driving better storage efficiency. Further reduce data footprint and costs with global variable-length deduplication and compression across workloads. Additionally, there is no need to deploy dedicated virtual machines to support recovery of each ESXi host.
  • Limitless Scalability:  The underlying web-scale architecture of the Cohesity platform enables organizations to scale BCDR capabilities limitlessly and painlessly.

Related Links:

Cohesity Version 6.5.1 Released!

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On August 17th, Cohesity announced the release of their new platform version 6.5.1! This release is packed with over 75 enhancements since the last release. Since there are so many, we can’t really go through them in any detail. However, below is a very long and distinguished bulleted list of most of the enhancements in the 6.5.1 release.

NOTE:  The below list of enhancements in version 6.5.1 are (GA) Generally Available with the exception of the individual listed items marked with either BETA or TECH PREVIEW.

  • CLOUD: 
    • Microsoft 365 –
      • (TECH PREVIEW) SharePoint Online support
      • (TECH PREVIEW) SharePoint Online site documents
      • (GA) OneDrive
      • (GA) Exchange
      • (GA) Filter users based on Azure Active Directory Attributes
    • Azure –
      • Incremental APIs for Managed Disk VMs
      • Support for Hyper-V GEN2 VMs
    • AWS –
      • A backup admin can specify a VPC and Subnet for fleet instances at the source level for backup
    • Helios On-Prem & Global Policies –
      • On-premise multi-cluster management: single pane of glass experience for customers with many dark sites (Tech Preview)
      • Global policies: Enable policies at a global level for global and standardized governance and data management
      • New storage impact simulation and enhanced ransomware detection
  • SOFTWARE INTEGRATIONS: 
    • (TECH PREVIEW) Exchange DAG Awareness –
      • Active/Active DAG configuration and automating DP for Exchange server mailboxes
      • Simplifies Server and Exchange DAG discovery and registration
      • Helps backup admins reorder backup priority of Exchange mailboxes base on their own requirements
    • (TECH PREVIEW) Integrated NoSQL/Hadoop experience –
      • Strengthening our NoSQL and Hadoop solution by unifying the comprehensive backup and recovery solution into a single framework
      • Unified protection and experience for your traditional and modern NoSQL databases
      • All workflows of DataProtect apply to NoSQL and Hadoop: a simple and comprehensive solution that’s a differentiator
    • Oracle –
      • Backup with “sysbackup” privilege
      • (TECH PREVIEW) Secondary VLAN for registration, backups, recovery, and cloning support
      • (TECH PREVIEW) Backup Oracle on Windows Servers support
      • Backup support for TDE databases
      • Pfile control during restore/clone functions
      • Log backup archival and PIT restore from archive
      • Enhanced Oracle pre-check utility
    • SQL –
      • (GA) Error message handling framework
      • (TECH PREVIEW) Exclude a SQL DB from a protection group
      • (TECH PREVIEW) Resume recovery after fail
    • SAP HANA 2.0 –
      • (GA) SAP HANA On Power
      • (BETA) Oracle on Linux
      • (GA) Uses native API for backup, recovery, enquiry, and delete
      • (GA) New RPM is downloadable from UI
    • Secondary NetApp –
      • Back up data protection volumes from secondary NetApp
      • Save space and no impact to their primary by backing up from the snapmirror copy and help reduce TCO
    • VMware Enhancements –
      • VMware SAN Transport via FC for better bandwidth/performance
      • File-level recovery with VMTools
      • Register vCenter on secondary network
      • VMware VM Recovery with Copy Recovery
  • PHYSICAL: 
    • Compute-Only Nodes –
      • Options –
        • Cisco UCS C220 M5
        • HPE DL360
        • Dell R640
        • Also some (BYOH) Bring-Your-Own-Hardware options with Cisco, HPE, Dell, Fujitsu, and Lenovo
      • Dedicated nodes for computing in a Cohesity cluster for running resource-intensive apps
      • Customers now have the flexibility to independently scale compute or storage resources
      • Experience better performance for resource intensive workloads
    • New Cohesity C6055 Nodes –
      • C6055 Node –
        • High capacity 1U node
        • Cost competitive dense node for lower TCO for replication and archives
        • New expanded platform support: Fujitsu, Dell ROBO
      • CX8405 Node –
        • Dense All-Flash platform (92.16 TB RAW per node)
    • New Fujitsu RX2540 M5 Node –
      • New OEM partner hardware
      • (2) Options –
        • 8TB RAW/5.3TB Usable
        • 16TB RAW/10.6TB Usable
    • New Cisco Configurations –
      • Cisco UCS S3260 – 14TB drive integration
        • (2) Options –
          • Half-populated drives – 294TB RAW/194TB Usable
          • Fully-populated drives – 588TB RAW/388TB Usable
      • Cisco UCS C220 M5 –
        • 4TB drives – 12TB RAW/8TB Usable
    • New Dell R640 ROBO Node –
      • (2) Options –
        • 46TB RAW/42TB Usable
        • 96TB RAW/64TB Usable
    • Physical Agent –
      • Auto upgrade agent after cluster upgrade
      • Directive-file backup support
      • Protect all local volumes support option in protection group
      • Auto deployment of agent
      • Parallel file/folder data protection
      • Support registering physical server on (2) Cohesity clusters
  • PLATFORM: 
    • SmartFiles (NAS) –
      • Intent-Based views
      • New SMB SuperUser for share level permissions of SMB views
      • Audit Log – filter tab
      • Support for NIS environments
      • User mapping between Active Directory and NIS Provider
      • External NAS Tiering – Uptiering
    • (TECH PREVIEW) MegaFile Restores for Physical Data Sources –
      • Backup/Restore large files faster, help meet SLAs
      • Support for AIX, Linux, Windows for files > 64GB
      • 3x faster restores for physical data source files > 64GB
    • (TECH PREVIEW) Service Providers – Pay-Per-Use Consumption –
      • Introducing a consumption-based pricing model for service providers
      • Traditional licensing locks service providers into multi-year license cycles and flat-fee monthly subscriptions
      • Cohesity is the only vendor that allows SPs to choose their own monthly commit and pay only for the software they consume through metered pricing for multiple SP offerings
    • Fault Tolerance –
      • New (EC) Erasure Coding configurations – EC 6:2/EC 8:2
    • Next Gen User Interface –
      • Global dashboard view
      • Multi-Cluster Monitoring
      • Smart context aware click-throughs
      •  Security Dashboard
      • Global Actionable Search
      • Single Cluster Dashboard
      • Physical Usage Reporting for Tenants
      • Physical Usage Reporting for Jobs
      • Dark Theme
      • Enhanced Reporting & Planning
      • Quick Protect
      • Quick Policy
      • One-time Protect
      • Dashboard Heatmaps
      • Reporting – Data Transferred to External Targets
      • Protection Group Run Details
      • Password management to force password changes

Blog Announcement: https://www.cohesity.com/blog/announcing-cohesity-pegasus-6-5-1-options-matter/

Cohesity Public Site: https://www.cohesity.com/

Protecting Against Ransomware with Cohesity

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Protecting Against Ransomware with Cohesity:

As most of you are aware, 2020 has been especially riddled with Ransomware attacks against large corporations. However, large corporations are not the only ones under attack. These attacks are against all types of businesses from the largest corporations all the way down to the small mom and pop businesses. Government agencies to include federal, state, and local are under constant attack as well.

The most notable ransomware attacks that most have heard about include Garmin, Travelex, University of California San Francisco, Honda, and Canon USA. Click on the appropriate company name to go to an article specific to that companies attack.

NOTE: For 2021 statistics on Ransomware attacks, see the first link at the bottom of this blog called “Ransomware Statistics“.

Most of the data protection solutions on the market (especially the legacy solutions) today have fallen pray to the above list of recent Ransomware attacks as well as many others.

To this day, not one Cohesity customer has had a successful ransomware attack to where they gained access to their Cohesity backups to delete or encrypt them and where they have followed our security hardening guidelines. That means that our customers have been able to detect, prevent, and/or recover and not have to pay any ransom whatsoever.

Here is an example of what can happen in your typical ransomware attack of today:

  • Employee clicks on link in an email and hackers gain access to your network.
  • Hacker then installs a key logger and gets an administrators credentials to systems (including your data protection system) on the network.
    • Hackers delete your backups of systems to ensure you can’t recover from backups and have to pay them the ransom.
  • If they don’t get administrator credentials to backup solution, they encrypt the backs first to again make sure you can’t recover any systems from backups and force you to pay the ransom.
  • If the company has any CCPA, GDPR, or other compliance related requirements and associated data, they collect that data.
  • They then encrypt the systems on the network.
  • Hackers notify the company that they have encrypted their systems and tell them they must pay a ransom to get the encryption keys to decrypt their systems. If they obtained any compliance related data, they also tell the company that they will publicly post the private data. If they do that, the company by law then has to publicly announce that they had a data breach. They then can be fined a very large amount of money for breaking compliance itself. This is a separate cost from the ransom.
  • Hackers typically give the company a certain time frame to pay the ransom or lose everything after that date as well as post any compliance related information on the internet.
  • If the company pays the ransom, it typically requires payment in Bitcoin because it is private and untraceable. Most companies don’t have a Bitcoin account, so they will need to pay a 3rd party company to convert the payment to Bitcoin in which the hackers will accept.
  • Once the ransom is paid, the hackers will provide all the decryption keys for every system that was encrypted.
  • The customer then has to randomly associate each decryption key to each server which can take days to do. The hackers don’t tell them which key goes to what specific server. If you have thousands of servers, that is a painfully long process all while your IT systems are still down.
  • Each virtual machine has to have twice the size of space on it in order to decrypt the system. Otherwise if there is not enough room on drive, decryption will fail until additional drive space is added. The time to go through this process can be painfully long based on how many systems need to be configured with additional storage.
  • At this point, this entire process from start to finish could be from days to weeks or more for a company to fully recover IF they pay the ransom.

For the company that has been attacked, if they have to pay the ransom due to being unable to restore from backups, this could mean a huge revenue loss for the company long term.

There are numerous costs associated to the attack:

  • The ransom itself.
  • The cost for 3rd party company to convert payment to Bitcoin.
  • Potential fines for breaking compliance due to leaked data if ransom not paid.
  • The associated cost of lost revenue due to systems being down for days, weeks, or more due to attack and recovery time frame of IT internal and externally facing services.
  • The associated cost of lost revenue due to bad reputation after personal data leaked.
  • The associated cost of massive increased hours worked by IT staff and any other employees to recover systems until they are back to normal operations.
  • Cost of new hardware/software implementation and associated man hours to implement new security measure to keep from being attacked again.
  • Legal actions against company for personal data leaked and other various reasons.
  • NEW (10/5/20) – US Department of the Treasury’s Office fines!

There are numerous precautions that can be taken to minimize the risk of your organization being attacked as well as recover easily and quickly to get your IT services up and running again. With that, securing your data protection (backup) solution becomes critical to protecting yourself against ransomware attacks.

How Cohesity Protects You Against Ransomware:

Cohesity takes security very serious and has extensive integrated cybersecurity in our solution. Listed below are the ways in which we protect your backups in our platform with the below principles and capabilities.

  • Reduce Attack Surface –
    • Zero trust architecture.
    • Bank-grade encryption (FIPS 140-2, NIST certified).
    • Single global platform.
    • No Windows or Linux front-end server.
  • Assess Security Posture & Vulnerabilities –
    • Vulnerability Management:
      • CyberScan App – Uncover cyber exposures and blind spots within your production environment by running on-demand and automated scans on backup snapshots against known vulnerabilities.
    • Advanced Threat Detection:
      • SentinalOne App – AI-powered prevention engine to Cohesity storage clusters, delivering the highest efficacy, lowest false positives, and most performant prevention technology. 100% signature-free and relies on machine learning models to deliver next-generation prevention. 
    • ClamAV App – Scan the files stored in the Cohesity DataPlatform directly, without sending the files to an external scanner.
    • Configuration analysis.
  • Access Management & Auditing –
    • Web UI, CLI, REST API’s all use SSL with TLS 1.2 and above.
    • Self-signed X509 certificates or company CA/certificates can be used.
    • Microsoft Active Directory integration and (RBAC) Role-Based Access Control.
    • (2FA) Two Factor Authentication (CAC / SAML).
    • (SSO) Single Sign-On Integration with SAML-based standards:
      • Active Directory
      • LDAP
      • Azure Active Directory
      • Okta
      • Ping
      • Duo
      • Shibboleth
    • Operational & file level accounting.
    • System & product level auditing.
    • Exportable granular audit logs.
    • Send logs to external syslog server.
    • Global whitelists network segments, individual IP’s, etc.
  • Data Governance / Compliance –
    • SEC 17a-f (f)
      • (WORM) Write Once Read Many & Data Security
    • FIPS 140-2 level 1
    • PCI DSS
    • Common Criteria EAL2+
    • Secure Government Clouds
      • AWS Govcloud
      • Azure Govcloud
      • C2S
    • (TAA) Trade Agreements Act
    • (ATO) Authority to Operate
    • GDPR / CCPA Governance –
      • Global actionable search.
      • We reduced copies of data on average from 8-10 copies to potentially 1-2 copies.
  • Defend –
    • Immutable file system –
      • Inaccessible from outside Cohesity cluster
      • Back ups stored in Read-Only state
    • DataLock / (WORM) Write-Once-Read-Many –
      • Unable to delete/modify snapshots until the set retention time has passed
    • LegalHold –
      • Unable to delete snapshots until LegalHold removed only by Data Security role
    • Provides a virtual “air gap”
  • Detect –
    • Helios machine learning driven anomaly detection.
      • Daily change rate on Logical data.
      • Daily change rate on stored data.
      • Pattern based on historical data ingest.
  • Respond –
    • Google-like global actionable search.
    • Instant mass restore – Recover hundreds or more virtual machines and have services up and running in the matter of minutes.
    • Salable file system to store years worth of backup copies.

Additional Resources – Cohesity & Ransomware Protection:

Cohesity & Pure Storage Partnership Announcement

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On August 12, 2020, Cohesity has officially announced the partnership with Pure Storage for their joint solution called Pure FlashRecover – Powered by Cohesity which is the industry’s first jointly-engineered all-flash modern data protection solution for rapid recovery, ransomware protection, and reuse of data.

Pure and Cohesity have formed this partnership based on strong customer demand for an integrated all-flash data protection solution that empowers customers to easily, quickly, and reliably back up and recover their data at scale. The companies have also formed this partnership at a time when more customers are embracing cloud services and are seeking ransomware protection.

Pure FlashRecover, Powered by Cohesity delivers all-flash data backup and recovery capabilities that enterprises require for restoring data rapidly in the face of a disaster or a ransomware attack. It enables flash-to-flash-to-cloud data protection and allows rapid, independent scaling of processing, throughput, and storage capacity for the most efficient use of all resources.

The solution also empowers organizations to future-proof data center investments and realize new levels of performance to meet growing petabyte-level recovery requirements. In addition, the solution enables backup data to be reused for analytics and DevOps, allowing multiple applications to leverage data stores on the high-performance, unified fast file and object FlashBlade™ platform.

By combining Cohesity DataProtect software with Pure’s unified fast file and object FlashBlade platform, the integrated solution delivers:

  • Performance: up to 3x faster backup and restore throughput than disk-based alternatives, capable of recovering thousands of virtual machines and up to 1PB of data a day to meet large-scale disaster recovery needs.
  • Integration: single-point purchasing, deployment and support all delivered through Pure, eliminating the need for customers to go through two vendors. Pure is now a Cohesity Technology Partner and the companies have committed to joint innovation.
  • Scalability: disaggregated compute and storage to enable independent scaling for backup / recovery processing, throughput, and storage capacity for the most efficient use of resources.
  • Simplicity: ease of management provided by cloud integration that enables flash-to-flash-to-cloud backup and recovery, low-cost public cloud storage for long-term retention, and non-disruptive upgrades.

Availability
Pure FlashRecover, Powered by Cohesity is being tested by joint customers today and will be generally available in the United States in Q4 CY2020 and in countries outside the United States in the coming quarters.

For More Information
To find out how your organization can leverage the benefits of Pure FlashRecover, Powered by Cohesity, visit:

For the full announcement on the Cohesity Blog page, see the below link.

Announcement (Blog): https://www.cohesity.com/press/pure-storage-and-cohesity-forge-strategic-partnership-to-deliver-rapid-recovery-at-scale/

Cohesity Data Protection DEMO (Short)

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Cohesity Data Protection DEMO (Short): https://youtu.be/PxT4zBS-L68

In this demo, I do a quick run through of the Cohesity 6.4.1 user interface related to the Data Protection use case specifically. This is not meant to be a complete demo of the entire interface and functionality, just a quick overview for the Data Protection use case only.

I start off by showing the types of sources you can connect to such as External Cloud Providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) as well as hypervisors, physical servers, databases, O365, Active Directory, NAS, etc.

Then I show how simple it is to create policies so that you can do local and long term retention, replication to other clusters, archive to the cloud, database logs, and much more.

The next step is to create a protection jobs for the various sources we mentioned above. We select the appropriate policy to associate to this protection job, and set various other settings such as QOA policy, SLA time frame, priority, etc.

If you would like to see a complete demo of the entire interface of our new 6.5.0 version, see my other video titled “Cohesity 6.5 User Interface Overview (DEMO)“…Click Here!

Cohesity 6.5 User Interface Overview (DEMO)

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Cohesity 6.5 User Interface

Cohesity 6.5 User Interface Overview (DEMO): https://youtu.be/S-JfmpeUe7I

Want to know more about the new Cohesity 6.5 (UI) User Interface and all the core capabilities, watch the below video of the demo. Not all capabilities (old and new) are covered in this demo, it is meant to provide an overview of the core capabilities.

Topics covered in this demo:

  • Registering Sources
  • Registering External Sources
  • Creating Policies
  • Creating Protection Jobs
  • Restores (File & Virtual Machine)
  • Clone Virtual Machine
  • Creating Views/Shares (SMB/NFS/S3)
  • Cohesity Marketplace Apps
  • Reporting
  • System Information

What’s New in 6.5:

  • Comprehensive Protection for Kubernetes Namespaces
  • (CDP) Continuous Data Protection for Mission-Critical Virtual Machines
  • Heterogenous Cluster Support
  • ROBO Appliance Availability
  • Dramatically Faster SQL Database Migration
  • Higher Data Resiliency
  • Runbook Automation for VMware Failover (DR)
  • Helios Mobile App

For more detailed information on what’s new in Cohesity 6.5, see the below link.
https://www.cohesity.com/blog/cohesity-pegasus-6-5-innovation-doesnt-have-to-be-zero-sum-game/

Cohesity Public Website: https://www.cohesity.com/

Backing Up & Restoring Active Directory With Cohesity 6.5

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Backing Up & Restoring Active Directory With Cohesity 6.5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azFuXXZpW68

In this video, I quickly run through how to connect to (AD) Active Directory as a source and register it as an Active Directory server using our latest software version 6.5. Then I show a Active Directory protection job I had already ran previously. And finally, I show how easy it is to perform a Active Directory restore of a user account in which I deleted at the beginning of the video.

Cohesity has an agent install that allows us to do granular backups and recoveries of Microsoft’s Active Directory objects. Anyone that has had to do an “Authoritative AD Restore” in their day knows how painful that can be after someone has deleted an entire (OU) Organizational Unit from Active Directory!

With Cohesity, you are able to backup the entire Active Directory database. Then do a granular restore of a single or multiple AD objects. The user interface presents you a comparison screen to show what AD objects are missing compared to a previous backup snapshot making it easy to see what has been deleted.

If you have enabled the AD Recycle Bin feature, we will restore it from there to ensure all the properties of the AD object are restored with it. If you do not have AD Recycling Bin enabled, we will restore the object but may be missing some properties in the same way it would with an Authoritative Restore after the Tombstone period has passed.

So system administrators can celebrate…no more are the days of doing an “Authoritative Restore” on your Domain Controllers! It is now quick and easy to restore an object.

Cohesity Public Website: https://www.cohesity.com/

Cohesity Documentation (Active Directory): https://docs.cohesity.com/6_5/Web/UserGuide/Content/Doc/ActiveDirectory.htm?tocpath=MS%20Active%20Directory%7C_____0

Backing Up, Restoring, & Cloning SQL Databases With Cohesity (v6.4.1)

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Backing Up, Restoring, & Cloning SQL Databases With Cohesity (v6.4.1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUfYxIuWhD8

In this video, I will show you how to register SQL servers as a source in the Cohesity version 6.4.1 user interface. Then I show how to create two protection jobs, one for a stand-alone SQL server and another for a SQL AAG.

Then we walk through how to recover the SQL (AAG) Always on Availability Groups database to the stand-alone SQL server as well as clone it. The we wrap up by taking a quick look at the SQL Dashboard.

Cohesity has an agent install that allows us to do more granular backups and restores to SQL databases. You can protect stand-alone, clustered and (AAG) Always on Availability Groups SQL servers. You can use our “Auto-Protect” feature so that when a new SQL server has been added to a SQL cluster or AAG, it automatically gets backed up as they are added. The agent also allows you to selectively pick which databases you want to protect.

Cohesity Public Website: https://www.cohesity.com/

Cohesity Documentation (SQL): https://docs.cohesity.com/6_4_1/Web/UserGuide/Content/MSSQL/SQLRequirements.htm?tocpath=MS%20SQL%7C_____1

Running ClamAV App on the Cohesity Platform 6.5

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Running ClamAV App on the Cohesity Platform 6.5.0a: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXGJVCdIseY

In this video, I walk you through enabling the use of apps on the Cohesity platform, installing, configuring and running the Clam AV app to protect file shares located on the Cohesity platform.

The Cohesity platform can act as a File/Object store (NAS) to replace your existing NAS or Windows File Shares. We also run Cohesity and 3rd party applications as containers on our platform. See our Marketplace for a full list of the available apps.

ClamAV App Description:

Protecting data on your file storage against viruses is important but relying on antivirus sitting outside of your NAS environment is inefficient. Moving data over the network for antivirus scans outside of your NAS servers adds unnecessary overhead and makes data vulnerable.

Now, with the integrated Clam AV app offered by Cohesity, users can scan the files stored in the Cohesity DataPlatform directly, without sending the files to an external scanner.

Cohesity Marketplace: https://marketplace.cohesity.com/app-details/clamav

Cohesity Public Website: https://www.cohesity.com/

Running the Insight Application on the Cohesity Platform 6.5

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Running the Insight Application on the Cohesity Platform 6.5.0a: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-M_DV0RBI

In this video, I walk through the process of downloading, installing, configuring and running the Cohesity Insight application on the Cohesity platform. I show the power of the app and how it can search for text patterns in numerous file types. See below for additional information on the Cohesity Insight application.

Insight App Description:

As backup and unstructured data grows exponentially, customers are often unaware of what data is stored, who has access to it and for how long. Customers need to retrieve or take action on files that contain specific information to gain business insights or for compliance purposes.

The Cohesity Insight app can help you easily perform an interactive text search on data stored on the Cohesity DataPlatform. The file types covered include office, text, pdf’s and zipped folders of these file types. The app can be pointed to Cohesity file shares (Views) as well as backed up objects.

Marketplace – Insight App: https://marketplace.cohesity.com/app-…

Cohesity Public Website: https://www.cohesity.com/

Cohesity Initial Configuration – Basic Overview

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As of October 30th, 2019, I started a new professional journey as a pre-sales Sr systems engineer with Cohesity. After six years working for VMware doing the same thing, I decided I needed a change. So far I have been very impressed with the company and our solutions.

So here is my second enablement video with Cohesity content where I provide a basic overview of an initial configuration of a Cohesity environment (version 6.1.1).

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxTUPPh3Zps&feature=youtu.be

Cohesity (UI) User Interface – Overview Video

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As of October 30th, 2019, I started a new professional journey as a pre-sales Sr systems engineer with Cohesity. After six years working for VMware doing the same thing, I decided I needed a change. So far I have been very impressed with the company and our solutions.

So in true fashion, I have learned enough to be dangerous and have created my first set of enablement videos with Cohesity content. Check out my first official video I created with Cohesity where I provide an overview of the Cohesity (UI) User Interface (version 6.1.1).

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxTUPPh3Zps&feature=youtu.be

VMworld 2019 – Hands On Labs: Know Before You Go!

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Hands On Labs

VMware’s annual VMworld US conference is upon us again starting August 24th, 2019 in San Francisco, CA! For those of you technical individuals that have attended previous years, you most likely know about the main attraction at the conference. The main attraction at the conference every year is the (HOL) Hands On Labs!

Our Hands-on Labs demonstrate the real value of VMware solutions in real time. As a VMworld attendee, you’ll gain special access to our latest technologies and explore a wide range of today’s most exciting topics. You can use a VMware-provided machine or your own device; either way, product experts will be available to provide one-on-one guidance. Hands-on Labs will be located in Moscone West, Level 3. 

I have been a part of the Hands On Labs staff for the last six years and it has been an incredible ride! It has been hard work, but has been the most rewarding experience in my IT career. I started out as a proctor the first few years, then became a lab captain and have been one for three years now.

As a lab captain, we take what features/capabilities our content leads want to showcase in the lab, then we put it all together. We figure out what VMware solutions we need in the lab environment and what use cases, features, etc. to show. Then it all comes together into the lab manual that we build from scratch. The development cycle for us takes months of work, but again it is very satisfying!

This year I am the captain of the “HOL-2001-01: What’s New in vRealize Operations 7.5” lab. So if you are interested in learning about what’s new in vRealize Operations 7.5, take my lab and let me know how I did. Feedback is always greatly appreciated! We create these for you and want you to get the best experience out of them, so feedback is important to us and we act on all your feedback.

Hands On Labs – VMworld 2019 Information:

At this years conference, attendees will have a variety of options in the Hands On Labs. Below are the optional experiences that we will have to offer. I have also provided tips for each one of the below options to enhance your experience and maybe walk away with a cool prize or two!

Self-Passed Labs: This is our popular service where you can interact with the latest VMware products at your own pace at a traditional workstation. Many product experts are in the room ready to assist. These flexible labs have 15- to 60-minute consumable modules that you can take incrementally throughout the week at VMworld. You can complete an entire lightning lab in just 30 minutes. Self-paced labs are delivered on a first-come, first-served basis and do not need to be scheduled in advance. 

Self-Passed Tip: Make sure you complete the survey after you finish taking a lab. That is how we continually improve the customer experience. Not to mention, for every so many surveys taken (e.g. 100), we give away cool prizes (Echo Dot, wireless headsets, etc.)

(ELW) Expert-Led Workshop: These sessions are presented by the VMware product experts who develop lab content, creating an engaging, instructional environment. Workshops require advance sign-up through the VMworld US Content Catalog, now available online. Join us to get your questions answered and discuss solutions in a group setting.

ELW TIP: Even if the ELW is full, get there early and get on the waiting list. Many attendees register for the ELW and don’t show up, so there is still a good chance you can get into one!

Lab Tour: These 30-minute tours provide a behind-the-scenes peek at what it takes to run our labs. The tour covers both business and technical topics focused on VMware products and solutions. You will meet lab creators and engineers running our multiple clouds.

TOUR TIP: At this point, many of the tours are already booked up. But we sometimes add additional tours as needed, so keep checking for availability!

(NEW!) VMware Odyssey: We are taking Hands-on Labs to the next level by adding gamification elements to the labs you know and love. Cheer your favorite team as they showcase their expertise across the VMware portfolio and compete to be the grand prize winner. Visit VMware Odyssey™ in Moscone West, Level 3 to learn more and enter for a chance to win prizes.

Odyssey TIP: The teams have already been selected, but come and support the teams anyway. They are giving away some prizes to viewers as well!

IMPORTANT TIP:

There is one final tip I would like to share with you, especially for those who are unable to attend the conference. In case you didn’t know, there is a “public-facing” Hands on Lab environment (https://labs.hol.vmware.com) that you can access from anywhere at any time.

Prior to the VMworld conference, you can access last years content which will have the versions of our solutions at that time. Within a month or so after the conference, we will start to release the brand new labs with the “most recent” versions of the labs to the public-facing HOL site. They get released little by little, so if you don’t see the one your looking for, keep checking back.

The first two digits of the lab numbers are the fiscal year they were developed for. So last years lab which you will see on the public site today start with “19**-00”. The new labs that will be showcased for this year start with “20**-**”. So that is how you can tell which labs are this years as they slowly get released to the public site.

Hopefully this post was helpful in providing you some basic information on what the Hands On Labs are, the benefits, what’s available this year, and helpful tips for attendees.

If you are attending the conference this year, take in all the information that is available to you in the sessions, take some of our labs, but most of all have some fun while you are there!

See you there!

Looking for vRealize Operations 7.5 Resources?

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In April of 2019, we released vRealize Operations 7.5. There have been significant enhancements and new capabilities that have been added to the solution. If you are currently running a previous version, I highly recommend updating to version 7.5 to take advantage of them!

With that in mind, I have collected numerous links to the VMware product page, VMware documents page, as well as to VMware blog posts related to what’s new in vRealize Operations 7.5.

The below links will provide you with a solid base knowledge on what’s new in vRealize Operations 7.5.

Happy surfing!

It’s a Multi-Cloud World We Live In!

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I currently work for VMware in which anyone that works in the IT field is familiar with and has potentially worked with one or more of our solutions during their career. I am going on six years with the company and have worked as a field pre-sales engineer for the last two plus years. Just in these last two years of talking to my customers, I have seen the growth in companies moving some of their workloads to the cloud. Not only that, they aren’t using a single cloud provider, but multiple clouds.

The realistic aspect of moving applications to the cloud is that not all applications are equal. I have found that some applications can be moved to the cloud, but others are better off staying in your private cloud for cost and other reasons. Some customers have the hopes of “getting out of the datacenter business and going 100% to the cloud“. This is not a reality for 99% of companies. I have heard this several times, but in reality, it is typically too costly and in many cases not technically feasible do to the numerous legacy goliath applications that won’t run in the cloud.

More and more I see where most companies have a multi-cloud approach to moving their workloads. If they currently don’t have this strategy, they are definitely looking at it! This is the trend I see every day and all the news articles, blogs, and posts reflect this as well. This is a very smart business move for the fact that each cloud provider offers different features, capabilities and cost benefits. One workload may run better and cheaper in a specific cloud that it would in another. So the approach to putting certain workloads in certain clouds is actually a very smart and beneficial move. However, this can be a little cumbersome for your IT folks since each provider has their own administrative interfaces you have to learn to use. It can create increased cost for training and workload for the learning curve for your IT personnel.

Because of this multi-cloud trend, VMware is investing continuously by acquiring companies that further our multi-cloud solution strategy and portfolio. This is evident in our most recent intent to acquire AVI Networks who is a leader in multi-cloud application delivery services. This is an important step forward in VMware’s networking and cloud strategies as we extend the application services we offer that help customers operate in a multi-cloud world. Another recent acquisition in May of 2019 is Bitnami, which offers a suite of products and projects that accelerate the delivery of applications to multiple clouds including Kubernetes environments. Today, Bitnami delivers and maintains a catalog of 130+ ready-to-run server applications and development environments in partnership with the world’s leading cloud providers. There have been other acquisitions to expand and advance VMware’s multi-cloud strategy, these were just the ones from recent months. Others include the acquisitions of CloudHealth, Wavefront, VeloCloud, etc. Let’s not forget they also continue to partner with the major providers in endeavors such as our Enterprise PKS solution which is a partnership with Google Cloud to provide an enterprise class Kubernetes solution.

For a detailed list of VMware’s acquisitions, refer to here.

As you can see, multi-cloud is not just a passing phase of IT, it is real! So much so that VMware is acquiring multi-cloud focused companies to advance our multi-cloud strategy. We can see this is well with all of our continued partnerships with the major cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, and Google Cloud Platform. We started out by announcing our partnership with AWS with our VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC on AWS) solution. This solution is wonderful because it gives you a true Hybrid Cloud environment. VMC on AWS is running our VMware stack of vSphere, (vSAN) Virtual SAN, and NSX on AWS hardware servers. The three solutions combined are also another offering called VMware Cloud Foundation. It is the three solutions, but also adds the SDDC Manager which manages the bring-up of the Cloud Foundation system, creates and manages workload domains, and performs lifecycle management to ensure the software components remain up-to-to date. SDDC Manager also monitors the logical and physical resources of Cloud Foundation.

This means you are running the same vSphere stack in AWS as you are in your on-premise private cloud. So your virtual administrators using the exact same management tools that they are currently using in their private cloud as they do to manage VMC onAWS resources. The vCenter server in the VMC on AWS instance shows up in your on-premise vCenter Server Web Client as just another vCenter server in enhanced linked mode. There is a huge advantage to this of no new tools, skills, or training that have to be used or learned for administrators saving the company time and money! And best of all, since it is all a vSphere infrastructure, this allows you to do live migrations of (VM) virtual machines to and from your private cloud to the VMC on AWS instance. Now that is impressive, think of the implications of being able to do that for (DR) Disaster Recovery, etc. Because of VMC on AWS running completely on the vSphere stack, it allows us to have a true Hybrid Cloud ability and experience.

VMware has also joined in partnership with the other major cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer, Google Cloud, and have nearly 4,000 VSPP cloud providers. The (VSPP) VMware Solution Provider Program is comprised of VMware software-as-a-service offerings and our global ecosystem of VMware Service Provider Partners. It is the ideal solution for all companies that offer hosted services to third parties, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers, cloud service providers (CSPs), application service providers (ASPs), Internet service providers (ISPs) and platform as a service (PaaS) providers.

So as you see, VMware has made huge bets by acquiring numerous cloud focused companies to advance our cloud strategy. In my humble opinion, the multi-cloud strategy is hear to stay and will only get more interesting as the years go by!

The Extensive Guide to Using VMware Documentation Like a Pro

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If you are looking for some great resources to VMware documentation, then you should check out my co-worker Nick Lorte’s blog titled “The Extensive Guide to Using VMware Documentation Like a Pro“!

Nick is a VMware field Solutions Engineer like myself and also has a large social media presence. I highly recommend that you bookmark his blog site! Many of the links in this post I also have listed in my “Useful Links” section of my site. However, his post is a nice condensed list of reference links that I know you will find useful.

So click on the link below and check it out!

The Extensive Guide to Using VMware Documentation Like a Pro Blog: http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2018/11/30/the-extensive-guide-to-using-vmware-documentation-like-a-pro/

What’s New With vRealize Automation 7.5 (On-Demand Webinar)

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What’s New With vRealize Automation 7.5 (On-Demand Webinar) 

On September 20th, 2018, VMware released vRealize Automation version 7.5. VMware vRealize Automation is a cloud automation tool that accelerates the delivery of IT services through automation and pre-defined policies, providing high level of agility and flexibility for developers, while enabling IT teams to maintain frictionless governance and control.

What vRealize Automation Delivers:

  • Agility through cloud automation Orchestration – Accelerate the end-to-end delivery and management of infrastructure and applications.
  • Governance through frictionless governess policies – Ensure that users receive the right-size resources or applications from the right cloud at the appropriate service level for the jobs they need to perform.
  • Choice through flexibility – Provision and manage multi-vendor, multi-cloud infrastructure, and stateful / stateless applications by leveraging new and existing infrastructure, tools, and processes.
  • Cost savings through efficiency – Reduce operational cost by replacing time-consuming, manual processes and gain additional cost savings through automated reclamation of inactive resources.

If you are looking to learn what’s new in vRealize Automation 7.5, you can check out the on-demand webinar at the link below.

What’s New With vRealize Automation 7.5:  https://portal.inxpo.com/ID/VMWare/14/ 

 

VMworld 2018 Announcements – Summary

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To clarify whether products are announced or released, please read the following statement from this press release: “VMware vSphere Platinum Edition, VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 1, VMware vSAN 6.7 Update 1, VMware vRealize Suite 2018, VMware vRealize Operations 7.0, VMware vRealize Automation 7.5, and vRealize Network Insight 3.9 are expected to become available by the end of VMware’s Q3 FY19 (November 2, 2018).”

Digital Foundation:

  • vSphere 6.7 Update 1 and vSphere Platinum Edition – 
    • vSphere Platinum Edition –
      • This is a new edition of vSphere, adding in AppDefense to go along with all current capabilities in the Enterprise Plus license. Also included in this edition is a vCenter plug-in that tightly integrates AppDefense and vCenter Services for ease of administration and enhanced visibility for vSphere administrators.
    • vSphere 6.7 Update 1 – 
      • Fully featured HTML5 client
      • Enhanced support for NVIDIA Quattro VMs
      • vCenter Server Convergence Tool
      • Enhanced content libraries
  • vSAN 6.7 Update 1 – 
    • Simplified operations and better support resolution
    • Driver and firmware updates using VUM
    • Better VROPS integration
    • TRIM/UNMAP support
    • Enhanced stretch cluster flexibilityimage
  • vRealize Suite 2018 – The announcement of vRealize Suite 2018 is aimed at helping IT deliver developer- ready infrastructure, with batch of enhancements to our already-existing platforms.
  • VMware Cloud Foundation 3.0 – 
    • Now supports choice of any network switch for greater flexibility.
    • More vSAN ReadyNode partners.
    • Scalability improvements of up to 64 hosts per workload domain.
    • Improved and more responsive UX.
    • NSX Hybrid Connect to move workloads across clouds.
    • VMware Validated Design (VVD) support and guidance.
  • VMware Skyline – 
    • Global Availability – In addition to being included in VMware Premier Support Services contracts, Skyline is now available to Production Support customers.
    • Skyline Advisor – Skyline Advisor provides a self-service portal for customers to access real-time dashboards, proactive recommendations from VMware’s library of knowledge, and suggested upgrades to prevent potential issues.
    • Skyline Log Assist – Skyline Assist, available before the end of the year, automatically uploads desired log files to VMware Technical Support once an issue is identified to help resolve support requests more quickly.
    • Additional Product Support – Support for VMware vSAN
  • vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) 3.9 – 
    • Enhanced Security
    • Dashboard support for Cisco ASA firewall
    • Greater visibility into NSX-T Datacenter
  • NSX-T Datacenter 2.3 – 
    • Support for bare-metal hosts
    • extends advanced multi-cloud networking and security capabilities to AWS, in addition to Microsoft Azure and on-premises environments
    • Support for NSX-T Datacenter in VMC on AWS environments
    • Simplified installation workflow
  • Project Magna – 
    • Project Magna will make possible a self-driving data center based on machine learning. It is focused on applying reinforcement learning to a data center environment to drive greater performance and efficiencies.
  • Virtualization on 64-bit ARM for Edge – 
    • VMware demonstrated ESXi on 64-bit ARM running on a windmill farm at the Edge. VMware sees an opportunity to work with selected embedded OEMs to scope and explore opportunities for focused, ARM-enabled offering at the edge.
  • Project Concord – 
    • VMware demonstrated a highly scalable, energy-efficient decentralized trust infrastructure for digital consensus and smart contract execution. Project Concord may be used to power distributed trust infrastructures, including blockchains. It is available immediately as an open source project.
  • Pulse IoT Center 2.0 –
    • Scalability: Now supports up to 500m devices
    • SAAS Support: Customers will be able to consume Pulse IoT Center as an on premise or SaaS solution depending on their needs. SaaS services will be hosted by VMware and VCPP partners.
    • Low-touch Secure Enrollment: Minimal touch enrollment and configuration capabilities will be supported for select gateways.
    • Deeper Edge System Management: Ability to perform Gateway configuration through the action framework (sshd, turn on/off port, IP address table, etc.) as well as provide complete firmware and BIOS updates for selected gateways.
    • Richer Alerts and Notifications Capabilities: Alerts can now be set for individual managed object or a group of managed objects. Notifications for alerts can be received via email or SMS integration, and through an API into a third-party system.
    • Enhanced Over-the-air (OTA) Updates: Customers now have more granular control over OTA scheduling, activation, progress status, package type and failure handling
    • More Extensibility: RESTful APIs will be available for all functionalities for customer and partner integration, improving extensibility.
    • Additional Security Features: Customers will be able to leverage role-based user access and multi- tenancy restrict access for different organizations and use cases.

VMware Cloud Services:

  • VMware Cloud Operations Services – The initial availability of VMware Automation Services (formerly known as Project Tango) was announced to help tackle the challenge of managing and deploying workloads in multi-cloud environments. There is an excellent blog that was published on this page that delivers a high- level overview of the initial three components:
    • VMware Cloud Assembly:  With Cloud Assembly, IT and cloud operations teams can orchestrate and expedite infrastructure and application delivery in line with DevOps principles, improving the overall developer experience, developers get an experience equivalent to provisioning resources from native public clouds.
    • VMware Service Broker:  Service Broker provides simple, self-service access to multi-cloud infrastructure and application resources from a single catalog, without requiring disparate tools. With Service Broker, operations teams can more effectively govern resource access, and use and enforce security, deployment and business policies across multi-cloud environments.
    • VMware Code Stream:  Code Stream automates the code and application release process with a comprehensive set of capabilities for application deployment, testing, and troubleshooting.
    • VMware Secure State (public beta) – This is a tool focused on cloud configuration security and compliance.
  • VMware intends to acquire CloudHealth Technologies, a public cloud management platform.
    • This is a key acquisition that will bolster VMware’s multi-cloud management capabilities as we enter a time when that concept becomes more and more of a core operating requirement in enterprises. This platform delivers benefits to VMware customers in terms of public cloud cost management, resource optimization, granular visibility and reporting.
  • Wavefront Enhancements –
    • This release includes scalability and security enhancements, serverless instrumentation capabilities (AWS Lambda SDK and Delta Counters), and deeper integration with AWS services, and VMware Pivotal Container Services (PKS).
  • VMware Log Intelligence Enhancements – 
    • VMware Cloud on AWS audit logs can now be accessed through Log Intelligence as a core service.
    • Log Intelligence is now integrated with Wavefront for Dev-Ops end-to-end troubleshooting.
    • There is now deep native AWS support for logs from CloudWatch and CloudTrail.
  • Project Dimension: 
    • A VMware technology preview that will extend the VMware Cloud to the data center, branch offices and the edge. Project Dimension will combine VMware Cloud Foundation, in a hyperconverged form factor, with VMware Cloud managed service to deliver an SDDC infrastructure as an end-to-end service, operated by VMware. Project Dimension will dramatically simplify operational complexity and cost and offers built-in security and isolation, allowing customers to focus on innovating and differentiating their businesses.

VMware Cloud on AWS:

  • Expanding Global Reach – VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS will growing to Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe and China in 2019 and has new enterprise capabilities.
    • VMC on AWS is now available in five regions worldwide.
      • US West (Oregon)
      • US East (N. Virginia)
      • Europe (London)
      • Europe (Frankfurt)
      • Asia (Sydney)
    • Advanced NSX – full integration with AWS Direct Connect, extension of micro-segmentation to individual VMs for follow-me security policies
      • Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) integration
      • New minimum SDDC configuration – lowered to three nodes
      • 50% lower cost of entry pricing – now get three hosts for the price of two
      • Vendor license optimizations – new features for vendor license compliance
    • Relational Database Services (RDS) on VMware:
      • Amazon Web Services’ RDS service will soon be able to run on VMware in a private data center or in a public cloud, thus offering developers a familiar RDS functionality available to them.
    • VMware Hybrid Cloud Extensions –
      • Ability to seamlessly vMotion from on-premises to AWS via public internet, Amazon Direct Connect, or WAN.

 

Digital Workspace:

  • Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management enhancements – 
    • Predictive patching based on device CVE scores
    • Industry standard Center for Internet Security (CIS) policy templates
    • Over-the-Air configuration of Group Policies
    • GPO coverage beyond limited native MDM policies
    • Workspace ONE Sensors – a capability that allows admins to query using PowerShell scripts any asset attribute such as system information, custom hardware inventory, registry and app data and even custom WMI data, and perform actions to remediate the endpoint to a desired state.
    • MacOS and iOS management enhancements
    • Android and ChromeOS management enhancements
    • Peripherals and rugged device management enhancements
    • “Ready to Work” Dell partnership
      • Dell Provisioning for Workspace ONE on first boot of new Dell PCs
    • Workspace ONE AirLift – 
      • Connector for SCCM
      • Automatically migrate SCCM Collections and PCLM workloads to Workspace ONE
      • Accelerate transition to Windows 10 modern management
  • Workspace ONE Trust Network (Tech Preview) – 
    • Security policy enforcement across mobile, endpoint and cloud-access
    • Integrations with Carbon Black, Netskope and Lookout
  • Sneak Peek for upcoming Horizon enhancements – 
    • Horizon Cloud for Azure enhancements
      • Addition of new VM types to catalog
      • Azure Disk Encryption
  • Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS
    • Support for instant clones, App Volumes and UEM (Preview)
  • Other enhancements in VMware’s Digital Workspace Platform
    • Management consolidation of VDI with support for physical desktops as well as Persistent desktops
    • UEM templates
    • vMotion for nVidia GPUs
    • Intelligent Networking with support for QoS for Blast Extreme
    • Multi-media redirection for HTML live streaming
    • Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub (Beta)
      • Note: generally-available later this quarter
      • Seamless secure file editing with WS1 Send app and Content Locker
      • Seamless sharing between WS1 productivity apps, such as Boxer, and MS Office 365 mobile apps managed by Intune
      • Boxer improvements include NIAP, Common Criteria compliance, ENSv2 advancements including VIP notification, calendar attachments
    • WS1 SDK to accelerate enterprise app development
    • “1-Click integration” with Okta to ramp up delivery of SaaS apps for a better employee workspace catalog experience.

How To Export VMware Licensing From vCenter Server

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How To Export VMware Licensing From vCenter Server | @erikhinderer via virtuallyread.com

How To Export VMware Licensing From vCenter Server

Here’s a helpful script to Export VMware Licensing From vCenter Server, which I wrote this back a bit ago and many of my VMware peers have found quite useful in the field. I finally got asked…Read More

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vRealize Log Insight 4.6 – April 2018 New Release

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vRealize Log Insight 4.6 – April 2018 New Release

vRealize Log Insight 4.6 – April 2018 New Release

Check out the newest release of vRealize Log Insight 4.6! This release includes new features for the Log Insight server and agent, resulting in improvements in scalability, usability, and user access management. Improved Scalability Log Insight is now more scalable and supports up to 15 vCenters per node. It also supports sending SYSLOG over UPD. The post vRealize Log Insight 4.6 – April 2018 New Release appeared first on VMware Cloud Management .

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Relocating Workloads from On-Premise vSphere…

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Relocating Workloads from On-Premise vSphere Infrastructure to a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC

Relocating Workloads from On-Premise vSphere…

This video demonstrates how the “Site Recovery” add-on feature in VMware Cloud on AWS enables us to overcome the “complexities” or relocating workloads between/among datacenters, and satisfy the dependencies requirement. Site Recovery enables us to migrate workloads and to also protect and recover from disaster events impacting one datacenter, and restore services and functionalities at the designated DR site. In our demonstration, our SDDC is the target DR site.

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VMware Acquires E8 Security: Leveraging…

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VMware Acquires E8 Security: Leveraging Behavior Analytics to Secure the Digital Workspace

VMware Acquires E8 Security: Leveraging…

Empowering employees by providing them with access to the apps they need—when and where they need them—is key to a company’s digital transformation success. However, as the number of apps, endpoints, and networks accessing company data grows, so does the risk of cyberattacks to a company’s expanding security perimeter. All too often, organizations respond to […] The post VMware Acquires E8 Security: Leveraging Behavior Analytics to Secure the Digital Workspace appeared first on VMware…Read More

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What’s New in vRealize Automation 7.4

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What’s New in vRealize Automation 7.4

What’s New in vRealize Automation 7.4

Making Clouds Invisible – Usability and Time to Value (TTV) Take a Front seat Fasten your seatbelt – What’s New in vRealize Automation 7.4 Hybrid cloud is a reality that imposes the need to be app-aware, self-driving and fully automated. The advent of containers, PaaS, and FaaS frameworks are driving faster, scalable and portable application development. Infrastructure and The post What’s New in vRealize Automation 7.4 appeared first on VMware Cloud Management .

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Self-driving Operations: See What’s New in…

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Self-driving Operations: See What’s New in vRealize Operations 6.7

Self-driving Operations: See What’s New in…

VMware vRealize Operation 6.7: Self Driving Operations for the Data Center Today, VMware announced the upcoming release of vRealize Operations 6.7, introducing several new and enhanced performance and capacity optimization capabilities to help customers adopt a ‘self-driving’ approach to operations management. This upcoming release of vRealize Operations will deliver continuous performance optimization based on operational The post Self-driving Operations: See What’s New in vRealize…Read More

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Free ebook! Upgrading to VMware vSphere 6.5:…

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Free ebook! Upgrading to VMware vSphere 6.5: Insights for vSphere Administrators

Free ebook! Upgrading to VMware vSphere 6.5:…

Continue to provide the best foundation for your business. Learn about the three phases of the upgrade to ensure a successful process overall whether you are upgrading from vSphere 5.5 or vSphere 6.0. Access this ebook to understand what steps should be taken to support and meet the needs of your organization.Follow VMware:

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VMware Cloud Services: Introduction

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VMware Cloud Services: Introduction

VMware Cloud Services: Introduction

At VMworld US 2017, VMware announced six VMware Cloud Services in addition to VMware Cloud on AWS. In addition, a new landing page was made available which includes other existing VMware products as well. While I plan on doing a deep-dive on at least the management products available as part of VMware Cloud Services, in […] The post VMware Cloud Services: Introduction appeared first on SFlanders.net .

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Free ebook: Upgrading to VMware vSphere 6.5:…

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Free ebook: Upgrading to VMware vSphere 6.5: Insights for vSphere Administrators

Free ebook: Upgrading to VMware vSphere 6.5:…

Continue to provide the best foundation for your business. Learn about the three phases of the upgrade to ensure a successful process overall whether you are upgrading from vSphere 5.5 or vSphere 6.0. Access this ebook to understand what steps should be taken to support and meet the needs of your organization.

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VMware Cloud on AWS Feature Walkthroughs

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VMware Cloud on AWS Feature Walkthroughs

VMware Cloud on AWS Feature Walkthroughs

We are pleased to announce the release of a new set of feature walkthroughs for VMware Cloud on AWS. Many of you are familiar with the feature walkthroughs that VMware has created over the years for various other products, like vSphere, NSX and the vRealize Suite. The post VMware Cloud on AWS Feature Walkthroughs appeared first on VMware Cloud Community .

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Introducing the New Intelligence-Driven Digital…

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Introducing the New Intelligence-Driven Digital Workspace

Introducing the New Intelligence-Driven Digital…

We announced our vision for analytics and artificial intelligence for the modern digital workspace at VMworld 2017, and today we’re really excited to introduce the industry’s first intelligence-driven digital workspace. The evolution of the VMware Workspace ONE digital workspace platform comes with major innovations in the following areas: A new intelligence-driven digital workspace powered by […] The post Introducing the New Intelligence-Driven Digital Workspace appeared first on VMware…Read More

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vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1f released

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vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1f released

vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1f released

Just one month after releasing vCenter Update1e VMware released the Update 1f for vCenter Server. The Update patches the vCSA operating system (Photon OS) against Spectre-1 8CVE-2017-5753) and Melt…Read More

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Getting Started with the VMware Cloud on AWS…

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Getting Started with the VMware Cloud on AWS Module

Getting Started with the VMware Cloud on AWS…

VMware Cloud on AWS is a new on-demand service that enables you to run applications across vSphere-based environments plus access to a broad range of AWS services. PowerCLI already helps to automate your VMware Cloud on AWS tasks! This includes tasks such as creating SDDCs, adding or removing ESXi hosts, managing firewall rules, and so […] The post Getting Started with the VMware Cloud on AWS Module appeared first on VMware PowerCLI Blog .

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Configure IPSec VPN on VMware NSX

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Configure IPSec VPN on VMware NSX | Let’s v4Real

Configure IPSec VPN on VMware NSX

NSX edge supports site to site IPSec VPN to remote sites. You can configure multiple internal networks to connect to through the VPN tunnel. Subnets and internal networks behind the NSX edge must not have overlapping addresses. The size of the edge device determines the number of tunnels that are supported. The number of tunnels…Read More

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vSphere 6.5 VM and vSAN Encryption FAQ now…

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vSphere 6.5 VM and vSAN Encryption FAQ now available

vSphere 6.5 VM and vSAN Encryption FAQ now…

I’m really pleased to announce the availability of the vSphere 6.5 VM and vSAN Encryption FAQ! This FAQ is built upon over a year of questions that have come in to me on both VM and vSAN Encryption. We’ve reached critical mass and now it’s time to share! Like most FAQ’s, the intent is that […]

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vSphere 5.5 and vSAN 5.5 End of General Support…

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vSphere 5.5 and vSAN 5.5 End of General Support Reminder

vSphere 5.5 and vSAN 5.5 End of General Support…

We would like to remind you that the End of General Support (EOGS) for vSphere 5.5 and vSAN 5.5 is September 19, 2018. To maintain your full level of Support and Subscription Services, VMware recommends upgrading to vSphere 6.5. Note that by upgrading to vSphere 6.5 you not only get all the latest capabilities of The post vSphere 5.5 and vSAN 5.5 End of General Support Reminder appeared first on VMware vSphere Blog .

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