Monthly Archives: March 2020

Horizon on VMC – Considerations and setting up a lab environment

March 16, 2020VMwareDHCP, Firewall, Horizon, Load Balancer, UAG, VMC, VMware Cloud on AWSDean

A few months back, I setup a Horizon Environment running in our VMC environment used for lab purposes. Since then, I’ve been asked by several people to go through the setup. So, I’ve also decided to create a blog post on the matter.

This blog post will cover the considerations for running VMware Horizon on VMC, and the technical setup itself of the lab environment I created.

Update 4th May: I recorded a session for the London VMUG on this subject, which you can watch here.

Topics covered;

Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS is not DaaS
Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS Deployment Guide and Supportability
Feature Support
Horizon on VMC architecture
Platform Considerations
- Identity Management
- File Shares
- Image management
Network Service
- VMC Network Segments
- Load Balancing
- DHCP
Firewall Rules
- Logging
Horizon Connection Broker Configuration
Some finl considerations
Further Resources

Horizon 7 on VMware Cloud on AWS is not DaaS

I will not cover the details of VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) in this post, but you can read about it here.

Horizon 7 (or later), running on top of VMC, is not a Desktop-as-a-Service offering. For this, we have our Horizon Cloud offering, which currently supports Azure and IBM Cloud.

Horizon on VMC, acts the same as the on-prem offering, i.e. the same considerations and configurations as you would take, if you deployed Horizon in your own private datacentre.

You can stretch existing Horizon environments to also make use of the compute and storage in VMC, and setup Cloud Pod Architecture between the locations as well. Alternatively, you can run a full Horizon environment solely within VMC itself. By running within VMC, you also ensure your desktops are near in proximity to native AWS services, such as file services, global load balancing services to name some examples.

Continue reading Horizon on VMC – Considerations and setting up a lab environment →

Introducing the VMware UK&I TAM Spotify playlist

March 16, 2020VMware, GeneralSpotify, TAM, Technical Account Manager, VMwareDean

As we find ourselves on reduced or zero travel thanks to the outbreak of COVID-19, we also find ourselves with reduced human interaction. Sometimes that can be a good thing (less chance to contract the virus in question), sometimes it cannot.

Whilst chatting to a few of my team members last week, I decided to ask our collective group about their Desert Island top 3 songs. Taking the idea from UK’s BBC Radio 4 show “Desert Island Discs”

Desert Island Discs is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942.

Each week a guest, called a 'castaway' during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (usually, but not always, music), a book and a luxury item that they would take if they were to be cast away on a desert island, whilst discussing their lives and the reasons for their choices.

Source

This was simply just a way to start off a conversation that wasn’t to do with the virus that is affecting all of our lives at the moment.

So, I present to you the VMware UK & Ireland TAM Team’s Desert Island Discs Spotfiy Playlist…

I also challenge you to have the same conversations with your teams over the next few weeks, create a playlist and make it public and tag me on twitter or comment below.

I challenge you all to do the same with your teams, especially if you are all remote. Open up the conversation today about something other than work! #vCommunity #vExpert #VeeamVanguard #itsec #Cisco Champion https://t.co/3ojUOcRpyr

— Dean L. (@saintdle) March 10, 2020

Follow @Saintdle

Dean Lewis

Join VMware & the Folding@Home project in the fight against COVID-19

March 16, 2020GeneralCoronavirus, COVID-19, Folding@homeDean

I won’t give a long written speech about the crisis we all face today.

However I do encourage you to spend your spare CPU cycles from your devices, whether thats personal devices or home lab servers, or anything else you can run the software, to fight the virus.

You can do this anonymously, or join a team, The main thing is you join up to help!!!;

VMware – 52737
EUC Community – 239018

The setup is really simple,

Download the folding@home software
Install the software
Setup your folding@home client
- Windows
  - After the installation, your default web browser will be launched connecting to http://client.foldingathome.org
  - Official website guide
- Linux
  - Official website guide
  - Independent blog post on Ubuntu setup
- Mac OS X
  - Official website guide
Select “Setup an Identity”
Choose your username, and set your team as “52737″ to join VMware.

Also check out our director @drGregBowman‘s blog post, “What we’re doing and how you can help in simple terms” for more info! https://t.co/9LKIdOua6F

— Folding@home (@foldingathome) March 15, 2020

Just got this installed and mostly working this morning. My #Alienware is crunching away! Everyone #VMware and #vCommunity please join Team ID 52737. This is team #VMware!

I noticed their website isn’t functioning well – Gateway errors. Use team ID 52737 #foldingathome https://t.co/TmYjTgSIcZ

— Amanda Blevins (@AmandaBlev) March 15, 2020

Just got this installed and mostly working this morning. My #Alienware is crunching away! Everyone #VMware and #vCommunity please join Team ID 52737. This is team #VMware!

I noticed their website isn’t functioning well – Gateway errors. Use team ID 52737 #foldingathome https://t.co/TmYjTgSIcZ

I just created an EUC Community team for this, for those that are running the Folding@Home client. Join team 239018 from your client#euc #euccommunity #vmware #citrix #nutanix #wvd #citrixctp #vexpert #microsoft https://t.co/JHWBbXCzeF

— Joel Stocker (@joelinthecloud) March 15, 2020

Follow @Saintdle

Dean Lewis

Link-O-Rama – VMware Announcements – Tanzu, vSphere 7, Cloud Foundation 4.0 and More

March 10, 2020VMwareTanzu, VCF 4.0, VMware, vROPs 8.1, vSphere 7Dean

Today VMware ran their announcement event “App Modernization in a multi-cloud world” event, which leads with their vSphere 7 flagship product and the native integration of Kubernetes (Project Pacific).

Below I’ve summarised the available information as of today;

Launch Event

Cloud Foundation Blog

vSphere Blog

Introducing vSphere 7: Essential Services for the Modern Hybrid Cloud
Introducing vSphere 7: Features & Technology for the Hybrid Cloud
YouTube playlist – Lightboard recordings of the various vSphere 7 features
VMware vSphere Edition Comparison
vSphere 7 Mind Map
- This mind map provides an overview of some the key features and capabilities in vSphere 7.

Virtual Blocks

Cloud Management Blog

Network Virtualisation

VMware Tanzu Service Mesh, built on VMware NSX is Now Available!

And finally here is the official press release for all of today’s announcements.