When we announced VMware vSphere 7 we promised that we’d keep blogging and making videos about vSphere 7 into May. We aren’t lying. Here’s a rundown of what came out last week in case you missed it.

On deck this week: Bob with Identity Federation, Niels with DRS improvements, Mike on vSphere with Kubernetes concepts, and the team with some special announcements you’ll want to pay attention to. Please tune in directly using the RSS feed, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

VMware vSphere 7

VMware vSphere 7 – Launch Recap & Links, Week 1

If you missed any news from the March 10 announcements they’re going to be here. This is a massive rundown of all the news from that week with brief descriptions, so if you want to catch up this is a good way to do it.

YouTube – VMware vSphere 7 Playlist

Did you know that the vSphere Technical Marketing team is global and works from home all the time? That explains why we haven’t stopped adding new videos to the vSphere 7 playlist on YouTube. We are glad you’re all joining us from your homes and being safe and thoughtful — thank you. Please reach out if you have any questions for us about working remotely.

VMware vSphere 7 – vCenter Server 7 Migration & Upgrades

Nigel Hickey runs us through some of the improvements in vCenter Server 7 when it comes to migrations. One of the biggest areas of focus for vSphere 7 was what we call “lifecycle” – patching, upgrades, maintenance, and so on. There is lots more to come on this topic so stay tuned.

VMware vSphere 7 – vMotion Enhancements

Niels Hagoort was one of the fellows who, quite literally, wrote the book on vSphere technologies like vMotion. He’s back to drop some serious knowledge on us about how vSphere 7 takes vMotion and makes it able to move GIGANTIC workloads quickly. Do you have a workload you can’t move without serious planning? You’ll want to read this and then start scheduling your vSphere upgrades.

vSphere with Kubernetes 101 Whitepaper

Mike Foley runs us through a new whitepaper that’s been published to help vSphere Admins figure out what all this Kubernetes stuff is. What is a cluster? Why are there two kinds? What is a namespace? What is VCF? — all answered in the paper. Lots of effort went into this to make it a great resource aimed specifically at vSphere Admins. If you run VMware infrastructure please go download a copy.

VMware Cloud

Sneak peek at deploying Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on vSphere & VMware Cloud on AWS

If you read the Week 1 recap you saw that vSphere with Kubernetes is available in VMware Cloud on AWS. William Lam runs us through the details of how that works, from a high level down into the glorious technical details.

Recent IDC Report Highlights VMware Cloud on Dell EMC for Edge Compute

If, after reading William’s post above, you’ve decided that you should investigate the VMware Cloud, you’ll be interested to know that there are lots of ways to consume the VMware Cloud, and IDC highlighted one of them – an on-premises version of it – in one of their recent reports.

VMware Tanzu

vSphere 7 and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid = Powerful Platform for Architecting Modern Apps

Boskey Savla does a wonderful job explaining the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, how it’s integrated into vSphere 7, what the differences are between different cluster types in vSphere 7, and why you’d run one versus another.

Managing Kubernetes at Enterprise Scale: A Closer Look at Tanzu Mission Control

Tanzu Mission Control is a pretty remarkable product if you are operating Kubernetes, including situations where your applications cross multiple providers and clouds, and even have multiple admin and development teams. It gives you centralized administration actions, policies, governance, observability, and diagnostics.

Other VMware News

Weathervane 2.0: An Application-Level Performance Benchmark for Kubernetes

This was posted back in February but it’s very interesting, and worth a read to see what the folks in our performance testing team are up to when it comes to making sure that our Kubernetes implementations are top-tier. It also highlights an increasing trend at VMware: placing our tools and knowledge in the public via GitHub. As of this post there are 192 repositories maintained by VMware.

A Force for Good: VMware Appliance for Folding@Home

Folding@Home is a massive distributed computing project that now has coronavirus/COVID19 work units available in it to help scientists better understand the virus. Amanda Blevins shows you how you can download an appliance as an OVA file to turn your extra CPU cycles into progress towards defeating nasty diseases.

Wavefront by VMware: COVID19 Dashboards

There are a few dashboards and web sites out there to help monitor the spread of the coronavirus. This one is possibly the most complete. It’s powered by Wavefront, a terrific monitoring and observability tool. Make sure you check out the other dashboards listed at the top. Also, keep in mind if you look at the data in the tables it is adding three decimal places (those aren’t thousands, it’s “.000”).

We are excited about vSphere 7 and what it means for our customers and the future. Watch the vSphere 7 Launch Event replay, an event designed for vSphere Admins, hosted by theCUBE. We will continue posting new technical and product information about vSphere 7 and vSphere with Kubernetes Monday through Thursdays into May 2020. Join us by following the blog directly using the RSS feed, on Facebook, and on Twitter. Thank you, and please stay safe.