-
In past posts, I started by creating a basic deployment infrastructure in Cloud Assembly and using tags to group those resources. I then wrote an integration to let vRA8 use phpIPAM for static address assignments. I implemented a vRO workflow for generating unique VM names which fit an organization's established naming …
Read More -
I was recently introduced to AdGuard Home by way of its very slick Home Assistant Add-On. Compared to the relatively-complicated Pi-hole setup that I had implemented several months back, AdGuard Home was much simpler to deploy (particularly since I basically just had to click the "Install" button from the …
Read More -
A few days ago, I shared how I combined a Service Broker Custom Form with a vRO action to automatically generate a unique and descriptive deployment name based on user inputs. That approach works fine but while testing some other components I realized that calling that action each time a user makes a selection isn't …
Read More -
My last post in this series marked the completion of the vRealize Orchestrator workflow that I use for pre-provisioning tasks, namely generating a unique sequential hostname which complies with a defined naming standard and doesn't conflict with any existing records in vSphere, Active Directory, or DNS. That takes care …
Read More -
Picking up after Part Two, I now have a pretty handy vRealize Orchestrator workflow to generate unique hostnames according to a defined naming standard. It even checks against the vSphere inventory to validate the uniqueness. Now I'm going to take it a step (or two, rather) further and extend those checks against …
Read More -
We last left off this series after I'd set up vRA, performed a test deployment off of a minimal cloud template, and then enhanced the simple template to use vRA tags to let the user specify where a VM should be provisioned. But these VMs have kind of dumb names; right now, they're just getting named after the user who …
Read More -
I recently shared some details about my little self-contained VMware homelab as well as how I integrated {php}IPAM into vRealize Automation 8 for assigning IPs to deployed VMs. For my next trick, I'll be crafting a flexible Cloud Template and accompanying vRealize Orchestrator workflow that will help to deploy and …
Read More -
In a previous post, I described some of the steps I took to stand up a homelab including vRealize Automation (vRA) on an Intel NUC 9. One of my initial goals for that lab was to use it for developing and testing a way for vRA to leverage phpIPAM for static IP assignments. The homelab worked brilliantly for that …
Read More -
I recently ran into a peculiar issue after upgrading my vRealize Automation homelab to the new 8.3 release, and the error message displayed in the UI didn't give me a whole lot of information to work with: I connected to the vRA appliance to try to find the relevant log excerpt, but doing so isn't all that …
Read More -
I picked up an Intel NUC 9 Extreme kit a few months back (thanks, VMware!) and have been slowly tinkering with turning it into an extremely capable self-contained home lab environment. I'm pretty happy with where things sit right now so figured it was about time to start documenting and sharing what I've done. Hardware …
Read More -
It's a good idea to take a snapshot of your virtual appliances before applying any updates, just in case. When you have multiple vCenter appliances operating in Enhanced Link Mode, though, it's important to make sure that the snapshots are in a consistent state. The vCenter vmdird service is responsible for …
Read More -
I manage a large VMware environment spanning several individual vCenters, and I often need to run PowerCLI queries across the entire environment. I waste valuable seconds running Connect-ViServer and logging in for each and every vCenter I need to talk to. Wouldn't it be great if I could just log into all of them at …
Read More