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Weekend Upgrade: ESXi and vCenter

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
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Send Email alert when SSH is enabled

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
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How to use PowerShell to send REST-API calls to vRA

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
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Homelab v 3.0 – “Hyper-converged” machine

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
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Free trusted CA!

Good news! https://letsencrypt.org/2015/10/19/lets-encrypt-is-trusted.html
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Homelab v 2.0 : The Specs

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
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vRealize Orchestrator : How to Fix ssl_error_weak_server_ephemeral_dh_key

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
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Limit characters in vRA Textbox using Regular expression

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.
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IaaS vRealize Automation Installation Issue : An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host

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
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