Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL

The Virtual Machine Computer Optimizer (VMCO) is a Powershell script that uses the PowerCLI module to capture information about the hosts and VMS running in your vSphere environment, and reports back on whether the VMs are configured optimally based on the Host CPU and memory.

It will flag a VM as “YES” if it is optimized and “NO” if it is not. For non-optimized VMs, a recommendation is made that will keep the same number of vCPUs currently configured, with the optimal number of virtual cores and sockets.

VMware Horizon Session Recording allows administrators of a VMware Horizon environment record their users activity in their Blast Extreme virtual desktop and application sessions.

With Session Recording, the administrator can choose to record local or remote sessions, to a central recording Server where the administrator can watch the recordings back via a HTML 5 web console integrated into the server.

The Session Recordings are stored as MP4 files for watching via the web console or downloading to play in a local player.

Legacy hardware-based load balancers don’t meet modern enterprise application delivery requirements in a multi-cloud world.

You need a modern software load balancer which separates the data and control plane to deliver application services beyond traditional load balancing solutions. Services such as real-time application analytics, security and monitoring, predictive autoscaling of application traffic, multi-cloud global server load balancing, and end-to-end automation.

Download the Multi-Cloud Load Balancing for Dummies book and learn how to:

• Deliver consistent services across clouds
• Enable elastic on-demand autoscaling
• Automate routine application delivery tasks
• Gain real-time visibility and analytics
• Empower developers with self-service
• Simplify advanced security management\
• Modernize microservices app delivery

To prepare for the delivery of an upcoming training course, I've deployed a few virtual machines in Fusion on my new iMac. I've configured this iMac with 32 GB of memory and I'm running vCenter 6.7, vRealize Operations 7.5, vRealize Orchestrator 7.6 and one nested ESXi 6.7 host with 4 Photon VM's on it.

Since all these solutions must be connected and registered, I had to find a way to provide DNS services with the lowest overhead. First I've looked at Dnsmasq but this tool wasn't so easy to use. I've found a great alternative called Namo, it even has a graphical user interface. 

NAMO is a tool to easily configure a local DNS Server on your Mac. So NAMO helps you to call a virtual machine running in Fusion from your desktop or another virtual machine via a domain name in your network. Queries that are not resolvable are forwarded to your provider. The only downside, you have to pay 19 € for the license.