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Category Archives: Announcements

Introducing docs.vmware.com

Today we are pleased to announce the official launch of docs.vmware.com. This portal unifies the product documentation for all VMware products, versions, and languages into a single platform so you can find the information that you are looking for more quickly and easily. VMware products offer a wide range of business solutions from desktop virtualization to supporting your hybrid cloud. We’ve heard your feedback that finding the right information can be difficult. Our search was out of date, the look and feel were not modern, the content was siloed, and the docs were not available on mobile devices. To address these problems, we decided to start from scratch. The design of this site is meant to enable you to better filter content, find relevant answers, and create custom views of information that you can access on any device.

Key Features for You

Here are a few features that we hope will help you find the information that you need.

It’s All About Search

Our site design features search on every page. We built a new search experience powered by Elasticsearch with an intuitive taxonomy to help you more easily locate relevant content. You can search the entire site or a particular book.

Filter to Find What You Need

With tens of thousands of pages of information, you need help reducing the scope of content to the products that you care about. Use the filters to limit your search to particular products, versions, subjects or information types.

Create Custom Docs Collections and Share Content

Your VMware stack spans many products and versions and you need a way to manage the product documentation for your specific portfolio. MyLibrary enables you to assemble custom doc sets and share as HTML collections. You can add and organize product documentation from any product, any version, and any language.

Products currently supported

Currently, we support the products listed below:

VMware vSphere
VMware NSX for vSphere
VMware vSAN
VMware vRealize Automation
VMware Identity Manager
VMware Horizon 7
VMware Integrated OpenStack
VMware Cloud Foundation
VMware Workstation Pro, Player
VMware Fusion
VMware Site Recovery Manager
VMware vRealize Orchestrator

Your Feedback

The launch of this site is only Step 1. We’ve put in new feedback mechanisms so we can hear from you more often and make more frequent improvements to the site and content. Explore docs.vmware.com now and let us know if you want to get involved in helping us evolve our docs.

Beta Launch of docs.vmware.com

Today we are pleased to announce the beta launch of the docs.vmware.com site. This portal unifies the product documentation for all products, versions, and languages into a single site so you can find the information that you are looking for more quickly. VMware products offer a wide range of business solutions from desktop virtualization to support your hybrid cloud. We’ve heard your feedback that finding the right information can be difficult. Our search was out of date, the look and feel was not modern, the content was siloed, and the docs were not available on mobile devices. To address these problems, we decided to create a new site from scratch. The design of this site is meant to enable you to better filter content, find relevant answers, and create custom views of information that you can access on any device.

Key Features for You

Here are a few features that we hope will help you find the information that you need.

It’s All About Search

Our site design features search on every page. We’ve put in a new Elastic Search engine and a taxonomy to help you more easily locate relevant content. You can search the entire site or a particular book.

Doc1

Filter to Find What You Need

Doc1

Create Customer Collections and Share Content

Use the MyLibrary feature to assemble custom doc sets that you can share as HTML collections.

Doc1

Your Feedback

The beta launch of this site is only Step 1. We’ve put in new feedback mechanisms so we can hear from you more often and make more frequent improvements to the site and content.

Let us know if you want to get involved in helping us evolve our docs. Expect to hear more about the docs.vmware.com site as we prepare for the official launch.

Important Announcement regarding the KB Digest blog

We have an important announcement today regarding this blog and the KB Digest blog.

Since 2007, our sister blog- The KB Digest has been published weekly, containing all the new KBs published by product the previous week.

What is being changed, and why?

The KB Digest is being merged into this blog, under the category KB Digest. With one central location for all Support communications with our customers we expect to be able to build our brand and broaden our audience.

Specifics:

1. Starting Jan 16 2017 no new content will be published to The KB Digest blog. Current content will remain active for one month after which the blog will be removed.
2. New posts will be found at The Support Insider, under the category KB Digest.
3. RSS subscribers will continue to receive updates uninterrupted (ie: no changes to your subscription are needed).

vSphere 6.5 is here! What you need to know

vSphere 6.5 has been released for all to download. We’re sure you vSphere users are all eager to install a copy and start kicking the tires, and we’re just as eager to see that you get started on the right foot. With this in mind, we have created the following list of Knowledge Base articles that are brand new, or have been updated for vSphere 6.5

First of all: Download VMware vSphere and Get Your vSphere License Key

KB articles recommended by VMware Support before you start your journey:

For more details on the release please refer to the vSphere 6.5 announcement.

If you are interested in learning more about vSphere 6.5, there are several options:

Read more about vSphere 6.5 at the product pages
Experience vSphere 6.5 with our free 60-day evaluation
Take one of the new online or instructor-led vSphere 6.5 courses

Opening Support Requests online

If your first instinct when opening a support request with us is to pick up the phone, we want to tell you about some behind the scenes changes we’ve been up to, to make the alternative — opening your request online — much more appealing. And we’re pretty excited about it!

Now, when you login to my.vmware.com, right there on the main page, you’re going to see this graphic. Try clicking that blue button and see what we’re talking about.

newfeature First, you’ll be prompted for your product from a pick list. Once you’ve done that you’ll begin to see the wizardry we’ve implemented. Let’s try a quick sample. My VMware asks us to type –in plain language– the nature of our issue. Okay, we want to know how best to do an upgrade.

newfeature3

As we typed this in, algorithms began churning away, not only live-updating a presented list of relevant KB articles, but also providing a confidence score that your issue can be resolved by that KB. Cool right?

Note: While a large number of our products are now setup to work, more are soon to come.

Try it out right now just to see how good our new technology is at solving issues.

Click here to start your journey!

VSAN Troubleshooting Video Series

VMware Technical Support University is very proud to present our Virtual SAN Troubleshooting Video Series, comprising of 26 bite sized videos- not only covering troubleshooting but also design, requirements, compatibility, and upgrades. These were first presented in the VSAN trouble shooting webinar that was conducted 27 October, 2016. This video collection, presented by Francis Daly is not to be missed!

***UPDATE: The videos have been moved. They are now part of a free 60-day Trial Subscription of the VMware Learning Zone. You can sign up for that and get access to all these videos (plus lots more) here https://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=det&id_course=316802

Introduction to vSAN Troubleshooting – [1:27]
vSAN Compatibility: Introduction – [2:51]
vSAN Compatibility: vSAN Hardware & Software Requirements – [2:16]
vSAN Compatibility: vSAN Architectural Best Practices – [7:57]
vSAN Compatibility: Is My SSD Supported in vSAN? – [9:20]
vSAN Compatibility: Is My RAID Controller Supported? – [8:00]
Storage Policies: Introduction – [1:28]
Storage Policies: vSAN Storage Policies In-Depth – [2:23]
Storage Policies: What Are Witnesses? – [3:29]
Storage Policies: Component States – [4:59]
Storage Policies: Policy & Object States – [3:22]
Storage Policies: Component Layout FTT1 SW1 – [3:25]
Storage Policies: Component Layout FTT1 SW2 – [3:52]
Storage Policies: Component Layout FTT1 SW1 VMDK 400 – [3:12]
Storage Policies: FTT2 SW2 VMDK100 – [1:58]
Storage Policies: Summary – [3:31]
Common Issues: The Upgrade Process – [2:15]
Common Issues: Upgrade Best Practices – [7:25]
Common Issues: Inaccessible Objects – [3:25]
Common Issues: Creation, Modification of Disk Groups – [3:43]
Common Issues: Capacity – [1:34]
Common Issues: Summary – [1:39]
vSAN Software Components – [7:31]
vSAN Troubleshooting Tools (Part 1) – [7:46]
vSAN Troubleshooting Tools (Part 2) – [9:28]
Summary – vSAN Troubleshooting – [1:23]

VMware Portals Update

Update – VMware portals issues (download products, get license keys, or other tasks) are resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience with this Severity 1 issue.

Should you have any questions, please contact our Global Support & Services team at my.vmware.com.

Scheduled My VMware Maintenance

My VMware will be undergoing a scheduled system maintenance on Saturday, April 11^th, 2015. During the time indicated below, you will not be able to place orders or download products. myLearn login and class registrations will also be restricted.

Begin: 02.00 PM PDT on Saturday, April 11 2015

End: 08.00:PM PDT on Saturday, April 11 2015

We apologize for any inconvenience this creates.

Announcement!

Many of you who read this blog also follow our social media accounts @vmwarekb, @vmwarecares, Facebook, and others. When we set out to engage with our customers online we wanted to be both proactive and reactive about it — that is, we would push out content like newly published KB articles, and we would answer customer questions. This has worked really well for us over the years and we thank all of you for helping making the ecosystem richer and a better place to work.

On the flip side, the number of channels tended to grow as new social networks came online. And grow. Eventually, what we ended up doing is confusing our customers as to which channel was for what purpose? We’re fixing that.

To stop this channel creep, over the next few weeks we will be consolidating some channels as follows:

Twitter:

Change: @vmwarekb is being retired. @vmwarecares will be the single voice going forward. We’re going to do this by renaming the vmwarekb account (as it has far more followers) to vmwarecares.

Action: If you currently follow vmwarekb you don’t need to do anything. You will still be subscribed to us, but the name will now be vmwarecares. If you follow vmwarecares currently you will need to re-follow us.

Facebook:

Change: VMware Knowledge Base is being retired and will go dormant. VMware Cares will be the single page going forward.

Action: Please ‘Like’ our VMware Cares.

By consolidating channels we hope to simplify and clarify the contact options to serve you better.

Come see us at VMworld!

Once again this year, the folks behind Knowledge Experience are coming to VMworld to showcase all the new things we’ve been up to since last year. I am sure you are asking why it is called Knowledge Experience – we have a new mission and vision and that is to provide contextual content to the customer to ensure they can solve their issue before they need to create a service request – we are looking for your insights and feedback on how you would like to see this.

Some of you will remember the great vSphere networking posters we were handing out last year. We’re happy to announce we have another one – this time for VMware View. All the interconnecting ports/protocols… these look great on the wall! To get yours, come say hello to Rick Blythe at the VMware Communities Info Desk in the Hang Space during these times:

Monday: 11am – 2pm
Tuesday: 11am – 2pm
Wednesday: 1pm – 4pm

That’s not all — in the Solutions Exchange Sharon, Robyn, and Rick have two demos for you:

New My VMware Web Portal prototype
New My VMware iPhone App prototype

We’re really pumped to hear what you have to say about how we can provide you more contextual content to help you solve problems before creating a support request and therefore reducing your time and effort so that you can get back to your day jobs – We’ll be right next to the My VMware pod. Our pod is titled:

Using Knowledge to Get Answers Quickly

Leverage online self-help support
Prevent or resolve problems quickly
Provide input to new concierge model

We hope you drop by; we’d love to hear what you think!

See you there!