Virtually Potato
open-menu closeme
vPotato
vRA 8
Projects
Scripts
Tips
Connect icon
CounterSocial GitHub Matrix Polywork Twitter XMPP
  • github twitter rss
    • Getting Started with the vRealize Automation REST API

      calendar Jun 3, 2022 · 17 min read · vmware vra javascript vro automation rest api  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      Getting Started with the vRealize Automation REST API

      I've been doing a bit of work lately to make my vRealize Automation setup more flexible and dynamic and less dependent upon hardcoded values. To that end, I thought it was probably about time to learn how to interact with the vRA REST API. I wrote this post to share what I've learned and give a quick crash course on …


      Read More
    • Fixing 403 error on SaltStack Config 8.6 integrated with vRA and vIDM

      calendar Nov 5, 2021 · 4 min read · vmware vra lcm salt openssl certs  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      Fixing 403 error on SaltStack Config 8.6 integrated with vRA and vIDM

      I've been wanting to learn a bit more about SaltStack Config so I recently deployed SSC 8.6 to my environment (using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager to do so as described here). I selected the option to integrate with my pre-existing vRA and vIDM instances so that I wouldn't have to manage authentication directly …


      Read More
    • Run scripts in guest OS with vRA ABX Actions

      calendar Sep 3, 2021  · edit Sep 20, 2021 · 14 min read · vra abx powershell vmware  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      Run scripts in guest OS with vRA ABX Actions

      Thus far in my vRealize Automation project, I've primarily been handing the payload over to vRealize Orchestrator to do the heavy lifting on the back end. This approach works really well for complex multi-part workflows (like when generating unique hostnames), but it may be overkill for more linear tasks (such as just …


      Read More
    • Notes on vRA HA with NSX-ALB

      calendar Aug 25, 2021 · 7 min read · nsx cluster vra availability networking  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy

      This is going to be a pretty quick recap of the steps I recently took to convert a single-node instance of vRealize Automation 8.4.2 into a 3-node High-Availability vRA cluster behind a standalone NSX Advanced Load Balancer (without NSX being deployed in the environment). No screenshots or specific details since I ran …


      Read More
    • Creating static records in Microsoft DNS from vRealize Automation

      calendar Aug 13, 2021  · edit Jan 18, 2022 · 11 min read · vmware vra vro javascript powershell automation  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      Creating static records in Microsoft DNS from vRealize Automation

      One of the requirements for my vRA deployments is the ability to automatically create a static A records for non-domain-joined systems so that users can connect without needing to know the IP address. The organization uses Microsoft DNS servers to provide resolution on the internal domain. At first glance, this …


      Read More
    • Joining VMs to Active Directory in site-specific OUs with vRA8

      calendar Jul 21, 2021 · 6 min read · vmware vra abx activedirectory automation windows  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      Joining VMs to Active Directory in site-specific OUs with vRA8

      Connecting a deployed Windows VM to an Active Directory domain is pretty easy; just apply an appropriately-configured customization spec and vCenter will take care of it for you. Of course, you'll likely then need to move the newly-created computer object to the correct Organizational Unit so that it gets all the right …


      Read More
    • Adding VM Notes and Custom Attributes with vRA8

      calendar Jun 1, 2021 · 4 min read · vmware vra vro javascript  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      Adding VM Notes and Custom Attributes with vRA8

      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
    • vRA8 Automatic Deployment Naming - Another Take

      calendar May 20, 2021 · 3 min read · vmware vra vro javascript  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      vRA8 Automatic Deployment Naming - Another Take

      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
    • vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part Four

      calendar May 18, 2021  · edit May 20, 2021 · 10 min read · vmware vra vro javascript  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part Four

      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
    • vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part Three

      calendar Apr 19, 2021  · edit Oct 1, 2021 · 9 min read · vmware vra vro javascript powershell  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part Three

      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
    • vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part Two

      calendar Apr 2, 2021  · edit Mar 23, 2022 · 21 min read · vmware vra vro javascript  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part Two

      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
    • vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part One

      calendar Mar 29, 2021 · 8 min read · vmware vra  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part One

      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
    • Integrating {php}IPAM with vRealize Automation 8

      calendar Feb 22, 2021 · 22 min read · python rest vmware vra networking  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      Integrating {php}IPAM with vRealize Automation 8

      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
    • VMware Home Lab on Intel NUC 9

      calendar Feb 5, 2021 · 13 min read · vmware homelab vra lcm  ·
      Share on: twitter facebook linkedin copy
      VMware Home Lab on Intel NUC 9

      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. …


      Read More
    John Bowdre photo

    John Bowdre

    Wrangler of imaginary computers.
    VMware vExpert
    Read More

    Featured Posts

    • VMware Tanzu Community Edition Kubernetes Platform in a Homelab
    • Secure Networking Made Simple with Tailscale
    • Burn an ISO to USB with the Chromebook Recovery Utility
    • Setting up Linux on a new Lenovo Chromebook Duet (bonus arm64 complications!)

    Recent Posts

    • Getting Started with the vRealize Automation REST API
    • ESXi Arm Edition on the Quartz64 SBC
    • Download Web Folder Contents with Powershell (wget -r replacement)
    • Active Directory authentication in Tanzu Community Edition
    • Nessus Essentials on Tanzu Community Edition
    • Bulk Import vSphere dvPortGroups to phpIPAM

    Series

    VRA8 14 PROJECTS 13 TIPS 9 SCRIPTS 8

    Tags

    VMWARE 25 LINUX 15 VRA 14 CONTAINERS 8 AUTOMATION 7 DOCKER 7 JAVASCRIPT 7 VRO 7 CHROMEOS 6 CLOUD 6
    All Tags
    3DPRINTING1 ABX2 ACTIVEDIRECTORY2 ANDROID2 API2 AUTOMATION7 AVAILABILITY1 CERTS2 CHAT2 CHROME1 CHROMEOS6 CLOUD6 CLUSTER2 CONTAINERS8 CROSTINI3 DOCKER7 GCP3 HOMEASSISTANT1 HOMELAB5 HUGO2 JAVASCRIPT7 JEKYLL3 KUBERNETES5 LCM2 LINUX15 LOGS2 META5 NETWORKING5 NSX1 OPENSSL1 PHOTON1 PHPIPAM1 POWERCLI3 POWERSHELL6 PYTHON2 REGEX2 REST2 SALT1 SECURITY5 SERVERLESS1 SHELL6 TAILSCALE1 TANZU5 TASKER3 VMWARE25 VPN5 VRA14 VRO7 WINDOWS5 WIREGUARD2 WSL2
    [A~Z][0~9]
    Virtually Potato

    Copyright 2018-  Virtually Potato. All Rights Reserved. Powered by Hugo, Hugo Clarity theme, and Netlify. View source.

    to-top