I was recently working on our lab environment at work that runs VCF 5.2.1. This “lab” is the one used in the VMware Livefire classes so it is quite similar to those used in the VMware Explore Hands On Labs. In any case, I had attempted to use Lifecycle Manager to start one of the VMs in the environment and it immediatel failed due to a bad password on vCenter. I did a RETRY on the Request and manually specified the password to use. That immediately went through to success. Since LCM was deployed via VCF’s SDDC Manager, I decided to power that up and attempt to login to it. NOTE: Since this is a lab, we don’t always power on SDDC Manager.

There are rare occasions where a vRealize Orchestrator workflow may become unresponsive or hung. In such a case, operators/admins are unable to cancel the workflow token. If such a thing happens and is not cleared even after a restart, then it may require delicate operation.

Step 1: Identify your running workflow’s token id

Every now and then I see a question come up that prompts me to do a little digging/experimenting. This brief article will address such a question. Last week, I saw the following request posted by a colleague:

Has anyone managed to configure the SQL plug-in with the embedded vRO PostgreSQL database?

For those unfamiliar, this is regarding the VMware vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) product that I used to work with regularly back when I ran the vCOTeam.info website (now archived here: https://vcoteam.github.io )

Introduction

VMware Workstation Pro is a powerful virtualization tool designed for software developers, IT professionals, and businesses to create, test, and deploy applications across multiple operating systems within a single host machine. Since it is an application installed on a base operating system, this means it is a Type-2 Hypervisor. By simulating virtual environments, Workstation Pro enables users to run multiple virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical computer, regardless of whether it runs Windows or Linux. This capability not only enhances productivity by consolidating hardware resources but also provides a sandboxed environment for testing software compatibility, doing Demos, and testing system upgrades safely. For Students and Professionals, VMware Workstation Pro offers invaluable hands-on experience with diverse platforms, facilitating skill development in system administration, software deployment, and network configuration, crucial for advancing careers in IT and software development. I have produced a number of videos on YouTube that step through some installation and configuration of Guest OS VMs running on VMware Workstation Pro in my VMware Playlist.

Overview

Since most of the Beta videos that have blown up since March 31st focus on the “what’s new” aspect of Jammy Jellyfish, that will not be my focus. Instead, since Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) is released this month, I thought it would be a good idea to prepare a consistent build process for VMware Fusion and/or Workstation using Hashicorp Packer.

Are you working in a pure Linux environment but want to use vCenter with Active Directory Authentication. Take a look at Zentyal, a Linux based Active Directory Domain Controller (Samba 4), that’s what my newly deployed vCenter 7.0.3 will be authenticating against by the end of this video!

I have a lab environment running VMware Cloud Director 10.x and wanted to leverage my existing Traefik server for SSL, Reverse Proxy, and Load Balancing my 3 server nodes. This article steps through my configuration and provides an example, working (anonymized) dynamic file based Traefik configuration file.

I have gotten into the habit of disabling password expiration on linux systems in my lab environments because often times, when dealing with VMware products, these are set to a year or less. Of course forgetting about an expired password can lead to other issues and time troubleshooting. My Validity Check failed due to Password has expired error…

During a recent upgrade of VCF 4.1 to 4.1.0.1 and then on to 4.2, I found myself in a bit of an unsupported situation due to the use of a build that was not part of the VCF 4.2 Bill Of Materials (BOM).

Symptom: SDDC Manager 4.2.0 will not apply the 4.2 update to the ESXi hosts even though the Update 4.2.0.0 bundle for VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 1d has already been downloaded.