vROPS Editions

Here is the comparison of features in different vROPS Editions:-

Here i found one more very good article on VMware Blogs Website:-
https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2016/12/vrops-editions-series-overview.html

Divested VMware vRealize Business Enterprise September 2016

Skyview Capital has acquired VMware’s vRealize Business Enterprise edition and its IT benchmarking offerings. They have formed a new company around the acquired products and team named Digital Fuel SV, LLC of which VMware is a minority investor.  

This paves the way for continued innovation of the vRealize Business Enterprise and IT benchmarking solutions as a separate entity to the benefit of our joint customers. Skyview Capital has an established track record of successfully acquiring and growing businesses through increased investments in sales, marketing and R&D.

VMware previously acquired Digital Fuel in July 2011 and created multiple products from this acquisition. This transaction enables VMware to focus its resources on its cloud management platform (CMP) business and its remaining vRealize family of products including vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight and vRealize Business for Cloud. Cloud business management is a core pillar of VMware’s CMP strategy, and VMware will continue to provide IT infrastructure and operations teams with increased transparency and control over the costs and quality of IT services for multi-cloud environments through vRealize Business for Cloud—a distinct and separate product offering from vRealize Business Enterprise.

Divested Product Name

Skyview's Product Name

Resources

vRealize Business Enterprise

Digital Fuel

• Support
• VMware Blog
• Skyview Press Release
• July 2011 Digital Fuel Acquisition

1-2-3 three step approach to understand in vROPS view

Today i have learned the 1-2-3 approach in vROPS view. As there is tendency to click on any object and then view gets changed, it is important to understand are you looking at right location. Let me share what is it:-
1. Which Object is Selected?
2. What is the Data Collection State?
3. Which Policy is applied on the selected object?
Find the screenshot to understand 1-2-3 approach

Intel Sightings in ESXi Bundled Microcode Patches for VMSA-2018-0004 (52345)

KB Link

Document Id

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52345

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Purpose

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Although VMware strongly recommends that customers obtain microcode patches through their hardware vendor, as an aid to customers, VMware also included the initial microcode patches in ESXi650-201801402-BG, ESXi600-201801402-BG, and ESXi550-201801401-BG. Intel has notified VMware of recent sightings that may affect some of the initial microcode patches that provide the speculative execution control mechanism for a number of Intel Haswell and Broadwell processors. The issue can occur when the speculative execution control is actually used within a virtual machine by a patched OS. At this point, it has been recommended that VMware remove exposure of the speculative-execution mechanism to virtual machines on ESXi hosts using the affected Intel processors until Intel provides new microcode at a later date.

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Resolution

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Note: All the patches associated with VMSA-2018-0004 have been pulled back from the online and offline portal.

1. VUM Customer who has already downloaded the patches associated with VMSA-2018-0004 would continue to persist in the VUM depot even after the EP is rolled-back. But, if customer tries to remediate the corresponding patch baseline created against the bulletins of these patches, following error would be encountered - "Cannot download software packages from patch source".
2. For Customers who have configured UMDS for offline patching, the patches associated with VMSA-2018-0004 continue to persist in the UMDS depot directory even after roll-back and can be patched successfully from the same. It is recommended that such customers manually remove the binaries/VIBs  from the UMDS directory or direct the downloads to the new UMDS directory location to be in-sync with VMware’s online depot. For more information see How to configure the UMDs download location.
3. Customers who use Stateless boot through Autodeploy will have to update the existing rule to point to the image profile associated with VMSA-2018-0002 instead. If you continue without updating rule, the Autodeploy would stateless boot into the image associated with VMSA-2018-0004 which is not intended.

For ESXi hosts that have not yet applied one of the following patches ESXi650-201801402-BG, ESXi600-201801402-BG, or ESXi550-201801401-BG, VMware recommends not doing so at this time. It is recommended to apply the patches listed in VMSA-2018-0002instead.

For servers using the Intel Haswell and Broadwell processors (see Table 1 for the specific list of affected VMware vSphere supported Intel Haswell and Broadwell processors) that have applied ESXi650-201801402-BG, ESXi600-201801402-BG, or ESXi550-201801401-BG VMware recommends the following: 

• On each affected ESXi host, add the following line in the /etc/vmware/config file:

cpuid.7.edx = "----:00--:----:----:----:----:----:----"

• This will hide the speculative-execution control mechanism for virtual machines which are power-cycled afterwards on the ESXi host.
• This line will need to be removed after applying a future fixed microcode from Intel in order to enable the full guest OS mitigations for CVE-2017-5715.
• When convenient, power-cycle virtual machines on the affected ESXi hosts; rebooting of the ESXi host is not required.
• Stateless vSphere ESXi Hosts using ESXi 5.5 or 6.0, this line must be re-applied every time the ESXi host reboots. VMware is investigating other options at this time.

Note: For servers using unaffected processors which have applied either the VMSA-2018-0002 or ESXi patches ESXi650-201801402-BG, ESXi600-201801402-BG or, ESXi550-201801401-BG, no action is required.

The effect of these recommendations for an affected ESXi host is that the speculative execution control mechanism is no longer available to virtual machines even if the server firmware provides the same microcode independently. (For customers who have applied the same microcode updates from their server vendor’s Firmware/BIOS, this recommendation may remove the need to downgrade the firmware. Consult your server vendor directly for guidance.)

VMware is working closely with Intel and the industry to come to a quick resolution of this Intel microcode issue and provide an update to our customers as soon as possible.

Table 1:

Note: Processors impacted by Intel Microcode sightings are highlighted in yellow.

	VCG Processor Series/Family	Encoded CPUID Family. Model. Stepping	Processor SKU Stepping		Microcode Revision
	Intel Xeon E3-1200-v3 Intel i3-4300 Intel i5-4500-TE Intel i7-4700-EQ	0x000306C3	C0		0x00000023
	Intel Xeon E5-1600-v2 Intel Xeon E5-2400-v2 Intel Xeon E5-2600-v2; Intel Xeon E5-4600-v2	0x000306E4	C1/M1/S1		0x0000042A
	Intel Xeon E5-1600-v3 Intel Xeon E5-2400-v3 Intel Xeon E5-2600-v3; Intel Xeon E5-4600-v3	0x000306F2	C0/C1, M0/M1, R1/R2		0x0000003B
	Intel Xeon E7-8800/4800-v3	0x000306F4	E0		0x00000010
	Intel Xeon E3-1200-v4	0x00040671	G0		0x0000001B
	Intel Xeon E5-1600-v4 Intel Xeon E5-2600-v4; Intel Xeon E5-4600-v4	0x000406F1	B0/M0/R0		0x0B000025
	Intel Xeon E7-8800/4800-v4	0x000406F1	B0/M0/R0		0x0B000025
	Intel Xeon Gold 61/00/5100, Silver 4100, Bronze 3100 (Skylake-SP) Series	0x00050654	H0		0x0200003A
	Intel Xeon Platinum 8100  (Skylake-SP) Series	0x00050654	H0		0x0200003A
	Intel Xeon D-1500	0x00050663	V2		0x07000011
	Intel Xeon E3-1200-v5	0x000506E3	R0/S0		0x000000C2
	Intel Xeon E3-1200-v6	0x000906E9	B0		0x0000007C

VMFS5 vs VMFS6

Several versions of the VMFS file system have been released since its introduction. ESXi supports VMFS3, VMFS5, and VMFS6.

For all VMFS version, ESXi offers complete read and write support. On all versions of VMFS, you can create and power on virtual machines.

Host Access to VMFS Versions:-

VMFS	ESXi
VMFS6	Read and write
VMFS5	Read and write
VMFS3	Read and write Note: You can continue to use existing VMFS3 datastores, but you cannot create new ones. If you have existing VMFS3 datastores, migrate virtual machines to the VMFS6 datastore.

Comparison of VMFS5 and VMFS6

Features and Functionalities	VMFS5	VMFS6
Access for ESXi 6.5 hosts	Yes	Yes
Access for ESXi hosts version 6.0 and earlier	Yes	No
Datastores per host	512	512
512n storage devices	Yes (default)	Yes
512e storage devices	Yes. Not supported on local 512e devices.	Yes (default)
Automatic space reclamation	No	Yes
Manual space reclamation through the esxcli command. See Manually Reclaim Accumulated Storage Space.	Yes	Yes
Space reclamation from guest OS	Limited	Yes
GPT storage device partitioning	Yes	Yes
MBR storage device partitioning	Yes For a VMFS5 datastore that has been previously upgraded from VMFS3.	No
Storage devices greater than 2 TB for each VMFS extent	Yes	Yes
Support for virtual machines with large capacity virtual disks, or disks greater than 2 TB	Yes	Yes
Support of small files of 1 KB	Yes	Yes
Default use of ATS-only locking mechanisms on storage devices that support ATS. See VMFS Locking Mechanisms.	Yes	Yes
Block size	Standard 1 MB	Standard 1 MB
Default snapshots	VMFSsparse for virtual disks smaller than 2 TB. SEsparse for virtual disks larger than 2 TB.	SEsparse
Virtual disk emulation type	512n	512n
vMotion	Yes	Yes
Storage vMotion across different datastore types	Yes	Yes
High Availability and Fault Tolerance	Yes	Yes
DRS and Storage DRS	Yes	Yes
RDM	Yes	Yes

 
When you work with VMFS5 and VMFS6 datastores, consider the following:

1. Upgrade. After you upgrade your ESXi hosts to version 6.5, you can continue using any existing VMFS5 datastores. To take advantage of VMFS6 features, create a VMFS6 datastore and migrate virtual machines from the VMFS5 datastore to VMFS6 datastore. You cannot upgrade the VMFS5 datastore to VMFS6.
2. Datastore Extents. A spanned VMFS datastore must use only homogeneous storage devices, either 512n or 512e. The spanned datastore cannot extend over devices of different formats.
3. Block Size. The block size on a VMFS datastore defines the maximum file size and the amount of space a file occupies. VMFS5 and VMFS6 datastores support the block size of 1 MB.
4. Storage vMotion. Storage vMotion supports migration across VMFS, vSAN, and Virtual Volumes datastores. vCenter Serverperforms compatibility checks to validate Storage vMotion across different types of datastores.
5. Storage DRS. VMFS5 and VMFS6 can coexist in the same datastore cluster. However, all datastores in the cluster must use homogeneous storage devices, either 512n or 512e. Do not mix devices of different formats within the same datastore cluster.