Articles In Infrastructure

By Timothy Karl, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

In today's age of digital collaboration, using tools like Microsoft Teams in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments is more important than ever. We've recently had customers ask how well the new Teams client will work in VDI, especially with support for classic Teams ending on June 30th. The new Teams version has some great new features, but there's a catch: it isn’t fully supported on Windows Server 2019 and doesn't work on Windows Server 2016 at all. This can be tricky for businesses usi... read more.

• March 27, 2024

By Carlo Costanzo, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

Recent developments from Broadcom regarding VMware's offerings have sparked significant discussions within our organization and our client base. As we dive deeper into these changes, I thought I would write this blog post to discuss two recent changes that I have been asked about and their potential impacts. The End of an Era: Discontinuation of ESXi Free With over a decade of availability, VMware has decided to discontinue the free version of its ESXi hypervisor (versions 7.x and 8.x), marking the end of... read more.

• February 16, 2024

By Ed Bratter, Posted in Infrastructure

Microsoft OneNote is a popular program for taking and sharing notes. One challenge with OneNote though is moving or migrating notebooks. This challenge has become amplified because Microsoft has changed the options available for moving notebooks through the various flavors and versions of OneNote over the years. There is also confusing documentation on how to move notebooks. Hopefully this blog will provide some clarity. A quick lesson on OneNote files: A given notebook is a collection of files that are st... read more.

• January 22, 2024

By Timothy Karl, Posted in Infrastructure

Overview Up until now, companies that were using Workspace on Citrix Cloud had to use a generic URL on the cloud.com domain. Citrix now gives you the ability to use a customer-owned domain, which helps with corporate branding, and makes it easier for users to remember the URL. It also helps with companies that are migrating from a NetScaler Gateway to Workspace, as they can migrate over their existing Gateway URL. For example, users at a company named AstraForge would typically access Workspace using a ge... read more.

• December 19, 2023

By Carlo Costanzo, Posted in Infrastructure

VMware released vCenter Server 8.0 Update 2 recently, so it’s time to upgrade the HomeLab. The process of upgrading is pretty straight forward (assuming no complications) and starts in the vCenter UI admin interface located on port 5480. Find the update and process the upgrade. It is about 8 GB, so it could take a while to download and install. What’s New With Update 2? With a successful upgrade, you are now on the latest version of vCenter. This includes your basic security and performa... read more.

• October 12, 2023

By Timothy Karl, Posted in Infrastructure

Email-based discovery in the Citrix Workspace app allows users to setup Workspace using only their email address. The benefit of this feature is that a user does not have to enter or remember any server URLs to access their Citrix resources. All they need to do is enter their email address and the Workspace App will auto-configure itself. To configure this feature in traditional NetScaler Gateway and StoreFront deployments, an administrator would need to configure the following for each email domain: A... read more.

• September 29, 2023

By Carlo Costanzo, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

Content Libraries For those entrenched in virtualization, vSphere's Content Libraries are no stranger. Despite their glaring advantages, the adoption rate has been sluggishly low, primarily because of traditionalist tendencies. Yes, you guessed it right, I'm talking about those dedicated LUNs still holding ISOs like it's 2005. I get it, it's comfortable to stick with what you know, but hear me out: Content Libraries in vSphere aren't just a fancier vessel for your ISOs. They are the bedrock for a more robu... read more.

• September 20, 2023

By Carlo Costanzo, Posted in Infrastructure

In my opinion, home labs are awesome. One of the best ways for you to learn software is to actually run it in your house on a home lab and have the ability to test out solutions, features, upgrades, and break fixes without having to worry about impacting your user base at work. The major drawback in running a home lab is cost. Often times, the gear is expensive (even when purchased used) and the cost to power the lab can also be excessive. Sure, you can spin things up in the cloud, but for me, I find witho... read more.

• August 25, 2023

By Carlo Costanzo, Posted in Infrastructure

Sometimes with VMware solutions, you need to install a custom vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB). There are VIBs for Nvidia GPUs, storage VIBs, and many others. In this post, let’s talk about how you can use Lifecycle Manager to install VIBs, rather than messing around with the Command Line as most of the instructions would have you do. What is a VIB? A VIB is a package containing software that you can install on a VMware ESXi host. It is typically a ZIP file containing the kernel modules, scripts, a... read more.

• August 16, 2023

By Carlo Costanzo, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

Do you have any Raw Disk Mappings (RDMs) in your environment? If so, you might want to learn more about Clustered VMDKs. Clustered VMDKs vs RDMs Before Clustered VMDKs, clients would have to use RDMs to present a shared disk between VMs. RDMs were basically LUNs passed directly through the ESXi host to the Virtual Machines. The cluster software then handled writes and locking directly with the SAN. You could abstract the interactions a bit more by using Virtual Raw Disk Mappings (vRDMs), but the gist of t... read more.

• July 27, 2023