Pets, Cattle, Ants and a Lone Wolf

Pets, Cattle, Ants Pets vs cattle as an analogy to manage IT assets and cloud infrastructure is a decade old.  Even before this observation bacame commonplace, this is something that I’d seen first-hand.  When I came into the IT industry, I was often supporting assets named after Knights of the Round Table, Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. Over the past two decades that’s changed to devices named after site locations and functions to… Read More »Pets, Cattle, Ants and a Lone Wolf

PowerShell within CloudConfig – Disk Identification Formatting and Labelling

  • simon 

In a previous post I’d worked through a few issues with formatting and labelling disks with PowerShell and part of a CloudConfig element.  I had someone get in touch with a similar issue linked to how they could use PowerShell within CloudConfig to provide Disk Identification Formatting and Labelling, for disks being added across multiple SCSI controllers. Thanks again to Dean and Chris, for providing environments for me to test against and validating the logic.… Read More »PowerShell within CloudConfig – Disk Identification Formatting and Labelling

PowerShell CloudConfig and vRealize Cloud Assembly

Adventures with PowerShell, CloudConfig and vRealize Cloud Assembly This week I had a customer with some errors trying to use the following componenets together: PowerShell, CloudConfig, and cloudbase-init within a Cloud Assembly blueprint.  To put it bluntly, the code was not running correctly.  The customer could run the code locally without any issue.  However, as soon as the same PowerShell was included within a CloudConfig element it did not work and they could not understand… Read More »PowerShell CloudConfig and vRealize Cloud Assembly

PowerShell – Discover Secure boot enabled Hosts

PowerShell – Discover Secure boot enabled Hosts As sometimes happens someone from the community got in touch to ask me the question below. “I’m currently banging my head against the proverbial trying to understand the Get-EsxCli command. What I am after is a listing of Secure-boot Enabled or disabled against all are ESXi hosts using PowerCli. Normal esxcli would be SSH to each ESXi host and then run: esxcli system settings encryption get…” As luck… Read More »PowerShell – Discover Secure boot enabled Hosts

Unable to access public load-balanced IPs on Azure Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster

  • simon 

This week I spent some time working through the excellent guides from Saintdle to build new TKG management and workload clusters in Azure. I could write up my own how to and deployment guide here, However, Dean has done a fantastic job of documenting the deployment of the TKG resources within Azure, look no further if you are looking for a guide. I deployed TKG 1.4 into Azure and the focus of my article is… Read More »Unable to access public load-balanced IPs on Azure Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster

VMware PowerCLI PowerShell 5 or 7

I got asked the following today. “Can I install PowerShell 7 on Windows 10, but still use VMware PowerCLI 12 ?” Based on the public compatibility matrix documentation for VMware PowerCLI 12.0 the question was prompted because the answer is ostensibly no. Because of this table in the documentation under Installation Prerequisites; OS Type .NET Version PowerShell Version Windows .NET Framework 4.7.2 or later Windows PowerShell 5.1 Linux .NET Core 3.1 PowerShell 7 macOS .NET… Read More »VMware PowerCLI PowerShell 5 or 7

My Journey into Tech

  • eleanor 

After having an unintentional break from blogging after a busy period I’m excited to start a new series. This is all going to be able how to navigate the world of IT as a millennial or generation z plus whoever’s next, I’m not claiming to have all the answers but I hope after spending the last 7 years of my life in IT I at least might be able to help someone looking into the… Read More »My Journey into Tech

VMware PowerShell VM Console Connections

VMware PowerShell VM Console Connections Here is a quick outline of how you can use PowerShell to interrogate and change the configuration of the number of VM console connections permitted to connect to a virtual machine. The main focus of attention here is “RemoteDisplay.maxConnections” which can be used to limit the number of simultaneous connections to a Virtual Machine, this isn’t something that is always set, so first a command to find out where the… Read More »VMware PowerShell VM Console Connections

Buying VMware vSphere Perpetual Vs Subscription?

Buying VMware vSphere Perpetual Vs Subscription? I get asked a lot about the best way to buy VMware vSphere  now, especially by organizations that may have only ever purchased vSphere in a perpetual model before. I’ll try and distill some of those conversations into this post. TL:DR – I am yet to see a vSphere only estate that cannot be upgraded to a subscription model for the same price or cheaper than a standard perpetual… Read More »Buying VMware vSphere Perpetual Vs Subscription?

VMware Powershell Get Network Usage Metrics

  • simon 

VMware Powershell Get Network Usage Metrics I was asked how it might be possible to get network usage metrics for Virtual Machines that where hosted on older versions of the VMware ESXi hypervisor the other week.  The request came about as the organization in question is looking to replace a platform and wants to get a better understanding of the network traffic being processed by the estate. First port of call with any request like… Read More »VMware Powershell Get Network Usage Metrics