So today I successfully passed the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 6.5 – Data Center Virtualization Design Exam 3V0-624! I had set a personal goal at the beginning of the year, that I would pass the VCAP6-DCV Design and unfortunately after months of studying I took it and failed in March. I was ready to give up based on the cost of the exam and the time i spent studying. However, I found out recently that a new version based on 6.

I have been looking for a new desk for awhile. Working from home I do not get to go into an office, or walk around to meet up with coworkers. I found myself sitting for way too long which hasn’t been best for the low back and leg pains I experience. I heard from a friend that getting a standing desk may be something that would be good. Standing desks come in all shapes and sizes but I knew from the start that I wanted a dedicated standing desk and just not a riser (one that sits on an existing desk).

So it seems to be that time of year again with new projects coming around. This time its all about vRA. This is probably my first of many blogs to come about things I have come across. My question today was how do I pre-create a computer AD account, join a device to the domain and then clean it up when the machine is destroyed. Turns out this is super simple in vRealize Automation 7.

vSphere 6.5U1 was released on July 27th. This is an incremental update a lot of people wait for before upgrading from a previous version. I have been lucky to have been running on vSphere 6.5 for quite some time and have been enjoying it very much. Obviously we never upgrade production first, if we can help it. I decided to attempt an upgrade on one of our QA vCenters that was deployed using the VCHA Advanced workflow.

Another New Blog Platform! So it seems there is a bit of battle between the Jekll/Hugo/Ghost platforms. I have been trying to be a little more flexible with Jekyll and it was giving me issues, so I decided to switch to Hugo. After doing the redesign I have been getting feedback that it is much cleaner, so I hope you enjoy it too! All links should be functional and moved nicely, if they dont work, please leave a comment!

I have been working on doing a vCenter Consolidation Project. This included migrating our systems to a new vRealize Operations Server. This particular one included 73 different vSOM keys, and as you may know there is currently no way to enter in multiple keys at a time. I reached out to Kyle Ruddy and he informed me there is an API to do this, and that started my adventure to get this working.

I have been waiting for native GUI support for L2TP vpn with local users and it is finally here! Ubiquiti Unifi Equipment now supports local radius auth using the 5.5.x code of controller! Please see below on how you can get this setup. For my example i will be using the Stable Candidate 5.5.11. Unifi Controller 5.5.11 Configuration is quite simple! Just follow these few easy steps and you will be up in no time.

I have been working on doing a vCenter Consolidation Project. This has meant recreating multiple permissions groups. I couldnt find an easy way to apply permissions at a datacenter so I updated this script to be used. Pre-Requsites VMware PowerCLI Link to Script Set-vCenterPermissions.ps1 permissions.csv Preparing to Execute the Script The script is pretty straight forward, just need to update columns in the CSV such as Datacenter, Group and Role.

I am honored to have been selected as a VMware vExpert once again for 2017! This is my fifth year as a vExpert (2013,2014,2015,2016 and 2017). It has been great to see the community grow and the amount of vExperts increase. I did a quick count, and in 2016 we are up to 1464 vExperts!

Warning: A few others and myself have noticed that when updating a VCHA Cluster to 6.5U1 it resets the hostname to localhost.localdomain stopping vCenter Web Client from Loading. It seems to be isolated to Advanced Deployments and not Basic. I would recommend destroying your VCHA Cluster, updating, then redeploying in this scenario. Warning2: It also seems that if you try to redeploy VCHA Advanced after an upgrade, it still resets the hostname, I have a case opened and will update here as neccessary.