This blog has been created as a central location to capture information that is relevant to my job. It will hopefully help the wider community at the same time. The content is focused on VMware's Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC).
By default NSX-T Data Center passwords (root, admin and audit) on the NSX Manager and NSX Edge nodes are set to expire after 90 days. Unless you rotate passwords on regular basis you may have overlooked this default configuration and suddenly find yourself locked out of being able to perform management tasks. Firstly in more …
Continue reading Fixing Expired Passwords on NSX Manager and Edge Nodes
If you have been through the process of performing an upgrade of VMware Cloud Foundation you will know the process involves downloading a number of bundles. VMware Cloud Foundation includes the following types of bundles. Install Bundles, An install bundle includes software binaries to install VI workload domains and vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. Update or …
Continue reading Automating the Download of VCF Bundles for a Release
This week I spun up my home lab to prepare it for something I'm working on and noticed that I'd never applied signed certificates to the deployed components so before starting on anything new I decided to address this first. What I thought would take 30 mins turned into a little more effort than planned. …
With the release of VMware Cloud Foundation v4.4.0, VMware introduced a number of enhancements and new Public APIs. One of particular interest is the APIs for Managing SOS, with the introduction of this Public API its now possible to perform health checks and generate support bundles as well as download them to your local system. …
Continue reading VMware Cloud Foundation – APIs for Managing SOS
By default when VMware Cloud Foundation is deployed, SDDC Manager and NSX-T Data Center are configured to use an SFTP service running locally on the SDDC Manager Appliance. For production environments its critical that this is changed before going live to ensure that you have the ability to recover in the event of a disaster. …
Continue reading Configure VMware Cloud Builder as a Backup Target for SDDC Manager
Last Updated: 21-Feb-2022 VMware Cloud Foundation has a number of Public APIs, the documentation around this can easily be found by logging into the SDDC Manager UI and selecting the Developer Center. From here you can even execute an API on the running system. Whilst this is all available right there in the SDDC Manager …
Continue reading Create VMware Cloud Foundation API Collection in Postman
On August 24th VMware released VMware Cloud Foundation 4.3, and along with this release a small change was introduced concerning the JSON file used by VMware Cloud Builder to perform the management domain bring-up. This change involves the JSON file generated from the Deployment Parameter Workbook being immediately deleted from the file system (usually stored …
Over the last twelve months it seems to be a common scenario where customers find that the password for the root account of vCenter Server expires and then they start observing weird behavior within SDDC Manager. By default following the initial deployment of a vCenter Server appliance, the root password will expire after 90 days, …
Continue reading VMware Cloud Foundation – Reset vCenter Server Root Password
If you need to make changes to the DNS or NTP server information that was provided during VMware Cloud Foundation bring-up, you can use the VMware Cloud Foundation API to update the servers. The VMware Cloud Foundation Operations and Administration Guide provides guidance around this today which can be found under the section title Updating …
Continue reading VMware Cloud Foundation – Reconfigure DNS and NTP Servers using API Explorer
Whilst working on a few things this week I needed to upgrade my home lab running VMware Cloud Foundation, and was walking through the Upgrade Precheck when I hit a failure for the ESXi Config. During my investigation what I've found is that if there is any kind of warning that gets thrown in the …
Continue reading VMware Cloud Foundation – Upgrade Precheck Fails for ESXi Config
My Cloudy World 