​As more organizations move their workloads to the public cloud, managing costs can become a significant challenge. I am seeing more and more customers moving to the hybrid-cloud or multi-cloud models. This brings its own challenges and costs is a top concern. I've been working with a customer to compare these two options and thought I would share my thoughts and understanding of these two popular cost optimization solutions: VMware Aria Cost and NetApp Spot. I will explore the benefits of each solution and help you determine which one might be better suited to your needs.

​VMware Aria Cost is a cloud cost management solution that helps organizations monitor and optimize their cloud spend. The solution provides a comprehensive view of cloud costs across multiple clouds and accounts, assisting organizations in identifying and reducing unnecessary spending. This is very powerful in that you can tie in one or multiple public clouds to gain visibility. 

I have heard many different customer issues regarding Citrix as of late. They are wondering what is happening with the direction of Citrix these days. Citrix has made some announcements and directional changes that are affecting their customers and not always in a positive way. So, I thought I would give my two cents on comparing the two platforms and, for those looking to make a move, discuss what a migration strategy should outline.

As virtualization technology, VMware Horizon and Citrix are two of the most popular solutions available on the market today. While both platforms have similar functionality, some key differences make VMware Horizon a better choice for businesses looking to streamline their virtualization processes. 

​One of the most significant differences between VMware Horizon and Citrix is their approach to VDI technology. While Citrix offers a VDI solution, VMware Horizon has developed a more cutting-edge integrated technology solution. It provides a more flexible, scalable, and secure approach to desktop virtualization, making it a superior choice for businesses that manage many virtual desktops. With Horizon, users can access their virtual desktops from any device, anywhere, and anytime, without compromising security.

Another area where VMware Horizon outperforms Citrix is in its integration capabilities. VMware has developed a robust ecosystem of solutions that can be seamlessly integrated with Horizon. These include cloud management platforms like VMware Aria Suite and VMware Cloud Director, VMware Workspace One and network virtualization solutions like NSX. These integrations enable businesses to create a more comprehensive and cohesive virtualization strategy that meets their unique needs.
​
On the other hand, Citrix relies on a more fragmented approach to integration, often requiring businesses to use multiple solutions from different vendors to achieve the same functionality. This can lead to increased complexity, cost, and potential compatibility issues.

​Having a clear understanding of an organization's technology landscape and how technology can help achieve business goals is crucial in today's rapidly changing business environment. To ensure alignment between technology and business strategy, organizations need an Enterprise Architecture (EA) group. An EA group is responsible for defining and managing an organization's technology architecture, making sure it supports strategic goals. In this article, we'll explore the importance and benefits of building an EA group and provide guidance on how to establish one within an organization.

When it comes to building an EA group, it's important to start with a clear understanding of your organization's business strategy and goals. This will help you identify the technology capabilities that are needed to support those goals and develop a roadmap for building out your EA capabilities.

Defining Strategic Goals
​Defining strategic goals is a critical step for any organization in achieving its long-term success. Here are some common steps that companies take to define their strategic goals:

1. Mission and vision statements: Companies often start by defining their mission and vision statements, which provide a clear purpose and direction for the organization. The mission statement describes what the company does, while the vision statement outlines where the company wants to be in the future.
2. SWOT analysis: Companies perform a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to identify internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. This analysis helps the company to determine where it stands in the market and identify potential areas for improvement.
3. Market analysis: Companies also conduct market analysis to understand their target market, customer needs, and competitors. This analysis helps the company to identify opportunities to differentiate itself and create a competitive advantage.
4. Goal-setting: Once the company has a clear understanding of its mission, vision, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, it can set strategic goals. These goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART), and aligned with the company's mission and vision.
5. Implementation plan: To achieve these strategic goals, the company should develop an implementation plan. The plan should outline the specific actions required to achieve the goals, including timelines, responsibilities, and resources required.
   ​

Remember that defining strategic goals is an ongoing process that requires regular review and adjustment based on changes in the business environment. It is important for companies to regularly assess their progress towards their goals and make necessary adjustments to stay on track.

Once you have a clear understanding of your organization's strategic goals, you can begin to identify the stakeholders who will be involved in the EA group and define their roles and responsibilities. This may include business leaders, IT leaders, architects, and other key stakeholders.

Next, you'll want to develop an EA framework that outlines the principles, standards, and guidelines that will govern your organization's technology architecture. This framework should be aligned with your organization's strategic goals and should provide guidance for technology teams on how to develop and implement technology solutions that support those goals.

Some Examples or EA Frameworks are the following:
​

1. The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF): This is one of the most widely-used EA frameworks and provides a comprehensive approach to enterprise architecture. It includes a set of tools, techniques, and best practices for developing and implementing enterprise architectures.
2. Zachman Framework: This framework was developed by John Zachman in the 1980s and provides a structured approach to organizing and defining an enterprise's architecture. It consists of a matrix of six perspectives (who, what, where, when, why, and how) and six rows (scope, business model, system model, technology model, detailed representations, and working systems).
3. Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA): This framework was developed by the US Federal government and provides a standardized approach to enterprise architecture across government agencies. It includes a set of reference models that cover different aspects of enterprise architecture, including business, data, service, and technology.
4. Gartner EA Framework: This framework was developed by Gartner and provides a structured approach to enterprise architecture that focuses on business outcomes. It includes a set of tools and techniques for developing and implementing an enterprise architecture that is aligned with business strategy.
5. The Open Unified Process (OpenUP): This framework is a lightweight, agile approach to enterprise architecture that is based on the principles of the Unified Process. It provides a set of guidelines and best practices for developing and implementing an enterprise architecture that is flexible and adaptable to changing business needs.
   
   

These are just a few examples of the many EA frameworks that are available. The choice of framework will depend on the specific needs and goals of the organization, as well as the industry and regulatory environment in which it operates.

​The most popular Enterprise Architecture (EA) framework is the Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF). There are a few reasons why TOGAF is so widely used:

I am really not sure how to start this blog. This one is different from all my previous blogs about technology. To be honest, I’m feeling a little scared, but I feel like this will be cathartic for me and maybe, in some way, reach someone going through what I did. So, with a deep breath, here I go.

Let me start with a bit of background. Before covid hit, I was very active in different tech communities. You see, I love what I do, and I love technology. I love to learn and share new ideas with others. I love to teach and mentor. I love seeing the impact on someone’s career that I may have played a small part in shaping. I love interacting with other peers within the industry and learning from them. I have made many friends through these communities.

One in particular that I am passionate about is the VMware User Group or VMUG. I have had the honor of being a leader in this community for ten-plus years now. VMware reshaped my career path, and I’ll never forget the first time I was able to dive into their virtualization platform back around 3.x. Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t meant to be a VMware kiss-butt blog, but the impact they had on my career drove a deep excitement to share what I was learning with others in this community, and the same can be said today. This passion was felt within the community, and we grew. At one point, I led multiple VMUGs within Central New York and blogged at every chance I could.

Others noticed this passion, and I took on a new role as a pre-sales architect. I could now speak to customers about this passion and so many others. At one point, I even took on the role of Citrix User Group Leader and Veeam User Group Leader. I was onsite with customers almost daily and planning the subsequent community events with my peers.

While at Sirius, now CDW, I took on the VMware Technology Brand Owner role. I traveled all over the country, teaching pre-sales engineers, post-sales delivery, and client executives about our strategy and how to grow their VMware business. I loved every minute of it. I felt alive and passionate, and I felt valued.

My family at home supported me, and when I was home, I made the most of my time with them to ensure they felt valued. I have some of the most amazing children. My oldest loves horses: my middle son lives, eats, and breathes hockey. My youngest daughter lives on Jesus and sugar. She never walks but dances her way through life. My Wife is a literal saint. I couldn’t do what I do without her tremendous support and encouragement. You must be wondering what in the world my point is. Brandon, it sounds like life is peachy, and everything sounds great. You have a successful career and a healthy family.

It's that time again, to begin the process, that probably should have been started a while ago, which is upgrading your virtual infrastructure to vSphere 6.7. 

​The end of general support for vSphere 6.0 is March 12, 2020, and if you are on an earlier version of vSphere, then you are currently running an unsupported version of vSphere and may also need to purchase to new hardware to support the latest version. 

I would like to begin this blog with some of the stated benefits to upgrading your environment.

​The new vSphere 6.7, vCenter appliance delivers major performance improvements from previous versions. First, vCenter Server has 2x faster performance in operations per second. This means better response times for the daily tasks you perform.

​There is a 3x reduction in memory usage and also 3x faster operations relating to VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler. If you would like more detail on these improvements, you can find the details in this blog by VMware.

​There are a lot of great new features and enhancements in the latest version of vSphere and if you are still on and older version than vSphere 6, then there are even more that came with vSphere 6.7. Below is a list of new features relating to vSphere 6.7.

vSphere Quick Boot
vSphere Quick Boot innovation restarts the ESXi hypervisor without rebooting the physical host, skipping time-consuming hardware initialization.
 
Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0
vSphere 6.7 adds support for Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 hardware devices for ESXi hosts and also introduces virtual TPM (vTPM) 2.0 for VMs, significantly enhancing protection and ensuring integrity for both the hypervisor and the guest operating system (OS). This capability helps prevent VMs and hosts from being tampered with. For virtual machines, vTPM 2.0 gives VMs the ability to use enhanced guest OS security features sought by security teams.
 
Encrypted vMotion
vSphere 6.7 also improves protection for data in motion by enabling Encrypted vMotion across various vCenter Server instances as well as versions. This makes it easy to securely conduct data center migrations or to move data across a hybrid cloud environment—that is, between on-premises and public cloud—or across geographically distributed data centers.
 
Microsoft Virtualization-Based Security (VBS)
vSphere 6.7 introduces support for the entire range of Microsoft virtualization-based security technologies introduced in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. In 2015, Microsoft introduced virtualization-based security (VBS). We have worked very closely with Microsoft to provide support for these features in vSphere 6.7.
 
vSphere Persistent Memory
vSphere Persistent Memory, administrators using supported hardware modules such as those available from Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise can leverage them either as super-fast storage with high IOPS or expose them to the guest OS as nonvolatile memory (NVM).

vCenter Server Hybrid Linked Mode
vSphere 6.7 introduces vCenter Server Hybrid Linked Mode, which enables users to have unified visibility and manageability across an on-premises vSphere environment running on one version and a public cloud environment based on the vSphere platform, such as VMware Cloud on AWS, running on a different vSphere version.

Per-VM Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC)
vSphere 6.7 introduces per-VM Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC), a key capability for the hybrid cloud that enables the EVC mode to become an attribute of the VM rather than of the specific processor generation it is booted on in the cluster.

Simplification of the architecture
One significant change to vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 is a simplification of the architecture and a reversion to running all vCenter Server services on a single instance. With the introduction of vCenter Server with embedded Platform Services Controller instance with Enhanced Linked Mode.

This blog is an exploration of the Ansible Tower interface, but before I dive in, let's begin with an overview of what Ansible is. 

Ansible is a software provisioning, configuration management, and application deployments tool that is also open-source from Red Hat. Ansible assists IT with the major challenge of enabling continuous deployment (CI/CD) with no downtime. 

With Ansible IT organizations can automate the provisioning of applications, manage systems, and reduce the complexities that come with trying to automate IT. With Ansible we can break down silos and create a culture around automation. My thought has always been that if you need to preform a task more than once then it should be automated.

Ansible integrates with the technologies you have already made investments within your organization, from infrastructure, to networks, security, cloud, containers, and applications. We all have infrastructure whether it be physical bare metal environments like networking with Cisco, Juniper, and Arista, to storage with products like Net App, and Pure Storage. 

Virtual infrastructure with VMware is also supported along with Red Hat Virtualization(RHV), and Xenserver.  Through Ansible organization can easily provision, destroy, take inventory, and manage across all virtual environments. 

Regardless of of platform, Ansible can help organizations with managing the installation of software, system updates, configuration, and managing system features.

Ansible Tower brings a web-based UI to Ansible which makes it a little easier for IT to perform the above mentioned tasks. Ansible Tower is the hub, of sorts, that gives IT a role-based access control, including control over the use of securely stored credentials for SSH and other services.

​Let's take a few minutes to look at the Ansible Tower interface.

On the left hand side of the Dashboard, you can see the resources menu and the objects that you can create. 

• Templates - A job template combines the credential, project, and inventory into an executable.
• Credentials - A credential allows Ansible to authenticate to the target hosts.
• Projects - A Project is a scope code repository containing Ansible objects such as playbooks.
• Inventories - An inventory is a list of target hosts.
• Inventory Scripts - An inventory script supports dynamic inventories. 

 ​
Let us dive a little more into each section beginning with Credentials. In this section, you create a credential that Ansible can use to authenticate to the target hosts. 

VMware Cloud on AWS is a jointly engineered and integrated cloud offering developed by VMware and AWS. Through this hybrid-cloud service, organizations can deliver a stable and secure solution to migrate and extend their on-premises VMware vSphere-based environments to the AWS cloud running on bare metal Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure.

VMware Cloud on AWS has several use case buckets that most customers find themselves falling into some overlap. The first of these use cases is for organizations looking to migrate their on-premises vSphere-based workloads and to extend their capacities to the cloud with the data center extension use case.

The next, is for organizations looking to modernize their recovery options, new disaster recovery implementations, or organizations looking to replace existing DR infrastructure.

The last one that I will mention, is for organizations looking to evacuate their data centers or consolidate data centers through cloud-migrations. This is great for organizations looking at data center refreshes.

VMware Cloud on AWS is delivered, sold, and supported by VMware and its partners like Sirius Computer Solutions, a Managed Service Partner. Available in many AWS Regions which can be found here and growing.

Through this offering organizations can build their hybrid solutions based on the same underlying infrastructure that runs on VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Cloud Foundations. ​

Day 1 began with the general session, which was a lot different than the previous year where the VMware Executives laid out their vision for the partner community. This general session was focused more correctly on the audience in attendance.

Back in October of 2016, VMware announced vSphere 6.5. This introduced a lot of changes to their flagship hyper-visor; you can see an earlier blog I wrote about that here. Now it is that time again for a new vSphere to be announced. The announcement of vSphere 6.7 came with a lot of new features and I will go over each of them in this blog. Let's take a look at these new features:

• vSphere Client (HTML-5) is about 95% feature complete
• vCenter Appliance Improvements
• Improved vCenter Backup Management
• ESXi Single Reboot Upgrades
• ESXi Quick Boot
• 4K Native Drive Support
• Max Virtual Disks increase from 60 to 256
• Max ESXi number of Devices from 512 to 1024
• Max ESXi paths to Devices from 2048 to 4096
• Support for RDMA
• vSphere Persistent Memory
• DRS initial placement improvements

Let's quickly discuss migration paths. The new version supports upgrades and migrations from vSphere 6.0 or 6.5 only and the current supported migration paths to version 6.7 are as follows:

• vSphere 6.0 to 6.7
• vSphere 6.5 to 6.7
• vSphere 5.5 to 6.7 NOT supported and as we know support ends for 5.5 in September of 2018.
• If your environment is running version 5.5, to successfully upgrade to 6.7 you have to migrate at least to version 6.0 then to 6.7.
• Before upgrading the vCenter Server in a mixed environment with vCenter Server running 6.0 or 6.5 managing ESXi hosts 5.5, you have to upgrade the hosts to at least version 6.0.

Day 1 began with the general session, where VMware Executives presented to the partner community and reinforced the importance of the partner as the unsung heroes helping to drive the  VMware business and most importantly driving value for their customers.