Weekend upgrade in preparation for vRealize Automation 7. – Updated ESXi to latest – Updated vCenter to latest U1 version – Repointed to an External PSC This link details everything that you need to repoint/ leverage the new U1 feature of PSC repointing: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2015/10/reconfiguring-and-repointing-deployment-models-in-vcenter-server-6-0-update-1.html UPDATE: Of course, no u

Recently got a request to add Alarms + Email notification whenever SSH is enabled in the hosts for security audit purpose. Seems easy enough until you found out vSphere doesn’t ship with out-of-the-box alert for this kind of events. Fortunately, William Lam has a good reference for vCenter VOB alarms that you can use to define the event. One of those alarm is: esx.audit.ssh.enabled Which triggers when SSH is en

Doing REST API calls via Powershell is straight forward using the Invoke-RestMethod cmdlet. Using the examples from inkysea’s blogpost, I’ll be showing how to do this calls to vRA using Powershell. To start off, we need to define the header and the body payload   After which, we define the URI/ vRA URL to pass the REST payload We then invoke the Invoke-RestMethod cmdlet ConvertTo-Json was done in $bo

3 weeks ago i decided to bite the bullet in building a new iteration of my homelab. Maintaining 4 separate machines (see Homelab v 2.0) is starting to be a burden as most of my time is spent  maintaining the hardware. With inspiration from /r/homelab (reddit.com), I wanted to  build an  “all-in-one” machine – with as much memory as possible. Put enough compute in one machine and just create nested E

Good news! https://letsencrypt.org/2015/10/19/lets-encrypt-is-trusted.html

Posting my long overdue specs I use for homelab.  Current iteration served me well in simulating customer scenario and playing with different specs. This are built from (mostly) commercially available components. Items are picked so i can do VSAN simulations as well. Hypervisor ESXi01 i5 2400 32GB Memory P8Z77-M Pro LSI 9211-4i (1 x 128GB SSD, 1 x 500GB SATA) Intel Quad-port NIC ESXi02 i5 2400 32GB Memory P8H67-M LSI

Recently encountered the error when trying to browse the configuration page of vRealize Orchestrator SSL received a weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key in Server Key Exchange handshake message. (Error code: ssl_error_weak_server_ephemeral_dh_key)   Quick Workaround from VMware: – Update CIPHER suites accepted by Orchestrator server LOCATION: /etc/vco/app-server/server.xml /etc/vco/configuration/server.xml FR

Quick post on how to limit  character input in a vRA TextBox. – Create a Property Dictionary – Click Edit – Add a New Property Attribute – Select RegEx Inp Sample Regular Expression: \w{3,5} – Limit the input only for any word combination with minimum of 3 and  a maximum of 5 characters.

I recently encountered issue in the installation IaaS component of vRealize Automation 6.2.1. Normally, you just run the pre-req automation PS1 script, execute the IaaS installer and you’re all set. But for this instance, I keep receiving the below error:  System.Data.Services.Client.DataServiceTransportException: The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send. —> System.N

Just wanted to share what I normally do when I need to reinstall/ install a new ESXi instance for my home lab. Normally, you have to use Rufus or any tools that can create a bootable USB. For me, I just use VMware Workstation to directly write to my USB. you just have to target the USB as the whole Physical Drive, mount the ISO, and install away! Steps: Create VM In the Wizard, use Entire Disk WARNING: Make sure to t