
How to configure vSphere 7.x Auto Deploy
In this blog post, I will show you how to configure Auto Deploy in vSphere 7.x. What is vSphere Auto Deploy? vSphere Auto Deploy is a service that is available in vCenter. You can easily provision ESXI hosts in minutes by using vSphere Auto Deploy in combination with PXE boot and Host Profiles. By default,…

How to successfully upgrade Cloud Director from 10.2 to 10.2.1
I needed to upgrade Cloud Director to 10.2.1 in my home lab. In this blog post, I will show you how to perform a Cloud Director upgrade. My Cloud Director instance only contains a single Cloud Director cell, but I will explain the upgrade process for a Cloud Director with multiple cells/appliances. So that you…

How to successfully upgrade NSX-T from 3.1.0 to 3.1.1
VMware did a great job with simplifying the upgrade proces of all the NSX-T components. Today I will demonstrate how to perform an upgrade of a NSX-T environment from NSX-T 3.1.0 to NSX-T 3.1.1. VMware docs: Upgrading NSX-T Data Center Upgrade NSX-T Data Center Prerequisites Check the VMware product interoperability matrices: link Download the NSX-T…

Use a letsencrypt wildcard certificate in a Cloud Director 10.x cell
I have deployed a Cloud Director 10.2 setup in my home lab, but I haven’t configured the public address and a wildcard certificate yet for the web GUI and the console proxy. In this blog post, I will show you how to request a let’s encrypt wildcard certificate, and I will show you how to…

Unable to delete a segment in NSX-T 3.x because of an orphaned logical port
In my home lab, I was unable to delete a NSX-T segment because of a logical switch port that was occupied by an orphaned VM. In this blog post, I will show you how to detach/delete the logical port with a simple API call. Summary A while ago, I was testing the HCX product from…

Start and stop scripts for VCF 4.x home lab with VLC.
In one of my previous blog posts, I showed you how to build your own VCF 4.0.1 home lab with VLC. I would like to share my start and stop scripts for a VCF home lab with the VMware community. Starting and stopping my VCF home lab was always a manual task and took a…

Cloud Director cells 10.1 and later failover methods.
HA support for the Cloud Director nodes were introduced in version 9.7 and has been improved in the 10.1 release. In Cloud Director 9.7 the only failover method was manual. So in case of a failed primary database node, the failover need to be manually initiated from the web console: https://vcloud.domainname.com:5480 That all changed in…

My presentation at vMA/vNSTechcon 2020
vNSTechCon is a dutch VMware event that take place once per year in the Netherlands. The event is based on two tracks: vMA (Management & Automation) and vNS (Network & Security). The setup of the event was this year a little bit different. Because of the current virus outbreak (Covid-19) the event took place online….

Deploy VCF 4.0.1 with BGP loopback addresses
For a customer project I needed to deploy VCF 4.0.1 with BGP loopback addresses on a Cisco Fabric (spine leaf setup). As you may already know VCF requires BGP configurations to configure BGP peerings in NSX-T. The VCF design we have is a little different from the blueprint (VVD 6.0.1). Instead of having the BGP…

Configure a NSX-T overlay network on a Windows 2016 bare metal server.
In this article, I will show you how to prepare your Windows 2016 bare metal server to be configured as an transport node in NSX-T and how to configure a NSX-T overlay segment on a Windows 2016 server bare metal server. By configuring your bare metal server as a transport node, you will be able…