I am an avid Macbook Pro and Android smartphone user. The combination influences the applications that I use. I figured I would share the applications I use most to possibly influence others, see what suggestions others have and to also see how my application landscape changes from year to year. So, what applications do you use?
Recently my laptop decided it no longer wanted to start. While it was in the Genius Bar, I dug up an old Macbook Pro (called MBP throughout the rest of this post) and began to configure it so I could use it for work. Configuring a different laptop gave me the opportunity to try out some new/updated applications and see if I could find more ways to be productive (I will cover this in a future post). In addition, it brought up some old issues I had experienced and gave me a chance to fix them and document them. In this post, I would like to talk about the problems I experienced attempting to connect to a Juniper Network Connect (called JNC throughout the rest of this post) VPN and how I was able to get it resolved.
I have heard a few mentions of confusion over the Log Insight product version numbers used and how they map to GA releases versus patched releases. I would like to clarify what the version format is and what previous versions have used.
There have been two major security vulnerabilities exposed this year that impacted most VMware products: ShellShock and POODLE. Log Insight addressed ShellShock by releasing a patch for Log Insight 1.5 GA, 2.0 GA and 2.5 TP3 and newer. In Log Insight 2.5 GA the POODLE attack has also been mitigated. In short, SSLv3 has been disabled. To my knowledge, this is the first VMware product with a server-side fix against POODLE that does not require manual user intervention. Note previous versions of Log Insight have not been patched. If you wish to disable SSLv3 on previous versions of Log Insight, read on.
A feature that might be a little harder to locate, but one that provides powerful insight is the new log browsing and infinite scroll feature known in the UI as “View Event in Context”. I would like to dive into the feature to expose it’s value.
In the last 18 months, Log Insight has released 4 GA versions, 8 TP versions (including beta), and 1 patch version (applicable to 1.5 and 2.0). Also during this time, the upgrade procedure has evolved starting with a CLI RPM upgrade in 1.0, switching to a GUI RPM upgrade in 1.5 TP2, and finally switching to a GUI PAK upgrade for 1.5 GA. In Log Insight 2.0, clustering was introduced and this increased the upgrade procedure by adding the requirement to upgrade workers. Finally, there are upgrade dependencies that must be followed. In order to make upgrades easier to understand, I would like to break it down into supported upgrade paths and supported upgrade procedures.
Less than a month after the beta and Log Insight 2.5 is now GA! This post contains everything you need to know about the new version including important upgrade information (there are changes from the beta!). Read on to learn more.
In addition to the major UI enhancements introduced in Log Insight 2.5, there are several smaller UI enhancements that I believe are important to call out. I would like to cover these enhancements in this post.
Log Insight provides multiple different ways to save queries (e.g. extracted fields, favorites, alerts, and dashboard widgets). To date, only extracted fields could be edited after they were saved. In Log Insight 2.5, the ability to edit all types of saved queries has been introduced. I would like to walk through how queries can be edited and what this new feature means to Log Insight users.
Extracted fields provide a powerful way to construct queries in Log Insight. In Log Insight 2.5, two improvements have been made to extracted fields to make them easier to understand and more efficient to construct. I would like to discuss these changes.