Sam has been working in the IT industry for nearly 20 years now, and is currently working for VMware as a Senior Technical Marketing Manger in the Cloud Management Business Unit (CMBU) focussed on Automation. Previously, he has worked as consultant for VMware PSO, specializing in cloud automation and network virtualization. His technical experience includes design, development and implementation of cloud solutions, network function virtualisation and the software defined datacentre. Sam specialises in automation of network virtualisation for cloud infrastructure, enabling public cloud solutions for service providers and private or hybrid cloud solutions for the enterprise.
Sam holds multiple high level industry certifications, including the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) for Cloud Management and Automation. He is also a proud member of the vExpert community, holding the vExpert accolade from 2013-present, as well as being selected for the vExpert NSX, vExpert VSAN and vExpert Cloud sub-programs.
Just a quick post today to cover a new vRO action and workflow I’ve uploaded to GitHub that configures vCenter High Availability in the basic mode. This is based on William Lam’s excellent PowerShell module
that does the same, but using vRO. I also hope to release a version for the advanced mode based on my PowerShell script
in the near future.
I recently started looking into ways of monitoring the temperature and humidity in my garage - for two reasons. Firstly, I have my lab workload cluster out there in the form of a Dell C6100, and I’ve noticed with the recent weather that the temperature in there gets…a bit warm. Secondly, I like to brew beer at home, and one of the keys to a good brew is consistent temperature!
This series was originally going to be a more polished endeavour, but unfortunately time got in the way. A prod from James Kilby (@jameskilbynet) has convinced me to publish as is, as a series of lab notes. Maybe one day I’ll loop back and finish them…
This series was originally going to be a more polished endeavour, but unfortunately time got in the way. A prod from James Kilby (@jameskilbynet) has convinced me to publish as is, as a series of lab notes. Maybe one day I’ll loop back and finish them…
Prerequisites
I’ve deployed a CentOS7 VM from my standard template, and configured the prerequisites as per my prerequisites post. Updates, NTP, DNS and SELinux have all been configured. I have added a 200GB disk to the base VM, which has then been partitioned, formatted and mounted to /nfs/data - this will be the share used for vCloud Director.
This series was originally going to be a more polished endeavour, but unfortunately time got in the way. A prod from James Kilby (@jameskilbynet) has convinced me to publish as is, as a series of lab notes. Maybe one day I’ll loop back and finish them…
Prerequisites
PostgreSQL server deployed and configured
Two vRO 7.4 appliances deployed
Before powering them on, add an additional network card on the vcd-sql network
This series was originally going to be a more polished endeavour, but unfortunately time got in the way. A prod from James Kilby (@jameskilbynet) has convinced me to publish as is, as a series of lab notes. Maybe one day I’ll loop back and finish them…
Installing PostgreSQL 10 Server
The base OS for the PostgreSQL server is CentOS7, deployed from the same template and with the same preparation as detailed in the prerequisites post.
Yesterday, Pivotal Container Service 1.1 dropped and, as it’s something I’ve been actively learning in my lab, I wanted to jump on the upgrade straight away. PKS with NSX-T is a really hot topic right now and I think it’s going to be a big part of the future CNA landscape.
My Lab PKS 1.0.4 deployment is configured as a “NO-NAT with Logical Switch (NSX-T) Topology” as depicted in the diagram below (from the PKS documentation). My setup has these network characteristics:
A couple of days ago I saw a tweet from Cody De Arkland
showing his new tweaked VMware Clarity based theme on his website.
Staying up until 3am to get the brisket on, so what do I do? Work on tuning up https://t.co/YDiFkGIKLY with some better @VMwareClarity styling! Check out the differences below! Subtle changes but I think it's a lot better. Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/6sYnuBahwI
Cody has gone down the route of using Hugo and AWS, which I respect, but just seems like too much work for me at the moment! I am familiar with WordPress, and Simon is barely computer literate at the best of times, so I can’t ask him to start writing in markdown. But I did want some of this Clarity goodness - so I set about learning how to create a WordPress theme, and how to integrate Clarity with this.
So…this is a frustrated sort of post. As you are most likely to already know, the new data protection laws (GDPR) are coming into effect on the 25th May 2018. I must emphasise that I am not an expert on GDPR, this post is my layman’s conclusion for my specific circumstances. I run this blog as an exercise to help others, provide information and as a hobby. There is a lot of speculation around how this will affect bloggers, and a lot of panic and mis-information too. I’ve seen a few people this week simply shut down and delete their blogs - which is both upsetting and sad.
When vRealize Lifecycle Manager 1.2 was released recently, I was keen to get it installed in my lab, since I maintain several vRealize Automation deployments for development and testing, as well as performing upgrades. With vRLCM I can reduce the administrative overhead of managing the environments, as well as easily migrate content between environments (I’ll be blogging on some of these cool new features soon).
However, I hit a snag when I began to import my existing environment - I couldn’t get the vCenter data collection to run.
