Personal

Ch...ch...ch...changes!

Lots of people have been changing roles and employers in my Twitter and LinkedIn feeds lately. My time is coming...

vExpert

Monitoring Chrony with Grafana and Telegraf

How to setup Telegraf, InfluxDB and Grafana to provide remote Chrony time server monitoring

vExpert

Replacing CentOS NTP servers with Photon and Chrony

One of the CentOS 8 time servers in the homelab let me down recently, so I decided to replace it with Photon OS and Chrony

UniFi

Fixed: UniFi Network Application Not Starting After Firmware Upgrade

How I managed to solve an issue with starting the UniFi Network Application after a firmware update on my homelab's UDM Pro

vExpert

Fixing VMware Identity Manager Network Properties Precheck Error

If you're trying to upgrade VMware Identity Manager and are warned that network properties are missing then this article may help you.

vExpert

Creating HTML email templates for vRealize Automation Code Stream

How to create an HTML formatted email template for use in a vRealize Automation Code Stream pipeline

HomeLab

How to get BGP working on a UniFi Dream Machine Pro

BGP isn't available natively on the UniFi Dream Machine Pro, but there is a way. This post explains how.

vExpert

HashiCorp Vault KV v2 Lookups from Ansible AWX

This post explains how to perform HashiCorp Vault KV v2 secret lookups from Ansible AWX

vExpert

SSL Validation in Python Virtual Environments for HashiCorp Vault lookups in Ansible AWX

When using a Python virtual environment (venv) and HVAC to perform HashiCorp Vault lookups from Ansible, you may run in to SSL verification errors.

vRO

vRO SecureString vs EncryptedString

What's the difference between a SecureString and an EncryptedString in vRealize Orchestrator (vRO)? This post explains it.

VMware

Cloudbase-Init with vRealize Automation and vSphere - No CD Drive!

This article explains how to use Cloudbase-Init with vRealize Automation and vSphere without requiring a CD drive in every Windows VM.

General

Celebrating 6 years at VMware!

A brief reflection and celebration of my 6 years at VMware

HashiCorp

Automating the installation of Cloudbase-Init in Windows templates using Packer

A brief post that provides some PowerShell commands to install Cloudbase-Init in a Windows Server image produced by Packer

Windows

Installing Cloudbase-Init on Windows for vRA Customisation

A brief guide to installing Cloudbase-Init in a VMware vSphere VM template to use with vRealize Automation 8

CentOS

Cloud-Init with vRealize Automation and vSphere - No CD Drive!

This article explains how to use Cloud-Init with vRealize Automation and vSphere without requiring a CD drive in every VM.

TIL

TIL (#2): vSphere Tagging Best Practices Study

Today I Learned (TIL) #2: That there is a performance study paper available around vSphere tagging.

TIL

TIL (#1): Microsoft KMS Client Setup Keys

Today I Learned (TIL) #1: You can use Microsoft's KMS client setup keys in your Packer builds and replace the key later on after cloning the template.

Retrospective

Personal Retrospective - February 2021

My first personal retrospective, February 2021. Includes customer work, vExpert, OCTO and more!

vRA

Automatic Deployment Names in vRA 8.x

How to make vRealize Automation (vRA) deployment names unique without having to bother users with entering one

General

The importance of applying software updates

Are we conditioned by our smart phones to assume that security is taken care of automatically? When it comes to business and enterprise software it's best to stay on top of updates.

vRA Featured

vRealize Automation (vRA) 8.3 GA

vRealize Automation 8.3 is out. There are a number of exciting changes included. These are my top picks from them.

AWS

How to Migrate Vault Auto-Unseal to AWS KMS

With an AWS KMS key defined, migrating an existing Vault installation from using Shamir keys to AWS KMS auto-unseal requires only a few steps to complete.

Vault

How to Configure AWS KMS for Vault Auto-Unseal

Rather than manually unsealing Vault in the homelab every time updates are applied, it'd be preferable to have it auto-unseal using an AWS Key Management Server. This is how to setup the AWS part.

AutoUG Featured

Introducing the Automation User Group

Passionate about automation? Then this could be the user group community for you! The Automation User Group (AutoUG) is getting ready for its first event.

VMware

Learning SaltStack: a Cloud Template for vRA

Following VMware's acquisition of SaltStack, learn more about Salt. Try this vRA cloud template to deploy a simple Salt environment.