I often get asked to speak to different organizations about what I have accomplished with the VMware vRealize Suite of products. The one question that almost always gets asked is how are you able to do everything that you have setup in your environment. After being asked this question a lot I thought I would give my thoughts in a Blog Post. Here is my “Recipe for Success”: Ingredients: Enjoy what you do.

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I have always be fascinated with everything that you can do with a Raspberry PI. When VMware released their Fling to install ESXi on the Raspberry PI I have become even more fascinated. An ESXi Host for the Home Lab for $50. Sign me up. During VMworld 2020, VMware announced that they would be releasing a Fling to install ESXi on the Raspberry PI. Before the VMworld session was over I had a new Raspberry PI ordered and it was delivered the next day, ahead of the Fling release, so that I would be ready.

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How to use vRealize Operations as your monitoring “Single Pane of Glass” For the 2020 VMware VMworld my presentation for the vBrownbag TechTalks was selected. Learn how to use the “Text Display” Widget on Dashboards to display data that is not within vRealize Operations. Display Weather Forecasts, Radar Maps, Data from SQL DBs on your next NOC Dashboard. Socials: Twitter: https://twitter.com/vBrownBag Facebook: https://facebook.com/vBrownBag iTunes: http://bit.ly/vbrownbagitunes https://vBrownBag.com is a community of people who believe in helping other people.

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I was recently reviewing some sample custom vRealize Operations Dashboards and I seen where some of the Dashboards had custom text and images. I reviewed how they included the text and images and in some of the sample Dashboards they used the “Text Display” Widget and used a url for the content. They would display images saved on a web server. I thought this was interesting and started reviewing what else could be displayed by using a url with the “Text Display” Widget.

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Smart Desk: Like most people that work in the Technology Field I have been “WFH” (Working From Home) since the beginning of March. I already had a dedicated office area but it wasn’t setup for full time employment. I always liked a L-Shaped desk and I had this layout by pushing to straight desks together. Worked OK but could use improvement. So I started looking at new desks. I had two requirements, L-Shaped and I also wanted my next desk to be a standup Desk.

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I recently setup the Infoblox 1.1 plugin for vRA 8.1 and ran into an interesting challenge that I thought I would share. The setup of the plugin is straight forward; follow the documentation and you’ll likely be set. However, if you use custom DNS views in Infoblox (internal, external, etc.) then some additional configuration is required that’s not easily identified. Out of the box, the Infoblox IPAM integration comes with only a few default properties.

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I have been listening to Podcasts for many years. Everyday while driving to and from work I would listen to a Podcast. Anytime I traveled to a conference I would download hours worth of Podcasts to listen to while flying. Most of the Podcasts I listen to are Technology related. Here are some of my favorites: IT Reality Virtual Speaking Podcast Develop Great Managers vBrown Bag Automators Mac Power Users Twit Network of Podcasts I have had an interest to be a guest on a Podcast for several years.

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I wanted to review VMware vRA (vRealize Automation) 8.x as a Microsoft Windows Server Admin. Most of the reviews you see are creating Linux VMs and customizing the OS using tools for Linux. I am going to create Windows Server VMs and customize the OS using a new feature added to vRA 8.1, Action Based Extensibility (ABX) with PowerShell. No vRO (Orchestrator) Workflows will be used. This is completely different compared to how I create Windows Servers with vRA 7.

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