vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part Two

Apr 2, 202122 min read

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...

vRA8 Custom Provisioning: Part One

Mar 29, 202115 min read

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 accompa...

Integrating {php}IPAM with vRealize Automation 8

Feb 22, 202137 min read

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 ...

Using VS Code to explore giant log bundles

Feb 18, 20213 min read

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 ...

VMware Home Lab on Intel NUC 9

Feb 5, 202122 min read

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 wa...

PSA: halt replication before snapshotting linked vCenters

Jan 30, 20214 min read

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 consi...