Articles by Kim Bottu

What is new in vSphere 7 U1, vSAN 7U1 and VCF 4.1

September 15, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

Introduction September 2020 brings a lot of new features and updates to some of the VMware product range such as vSphere 7 U1, vSAN 7U1 and VCF 4.1. I have to say, it was pretty hard not to spill any secrets this time! vSphere 7 U1 vSphere 7 U1 supports Tanzu! The prerequisite to deploy VCF, should you want to deploy Tanzu, has been dropped. Yes, you have read that right! As of vSphere 7 U1 we will be able to deploy enterprise-grade Kubernetes into an existing infrastructure. Want more good news? Deploying Tanzu on vSphere can be accomplished in less than 1 hour! Deploying a Tanzu POC or running Tanzu in your homelab has never been that easy! NSX-T […]

Integrating CloudHealth and vROps

September 13, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

Introduction CloudHealth is the best product available to manage and optimize your cloud spend and vROps is the best tool to monitor and optimize the Cloud. This article will go into the technical details of how to integrate CloudHealth into vROps. Later Anthony Poh (CloudHealth Senior TAM) will write a second post which will show you what the things in this post look like in the CloudHealth UI itself. CloudHealth If you are running workloads and services in the cloud and you want to optimize your cloud spend, CloudHealth is the way to go! A couple of CloudHealth features you definitely have to look into are: Perspectives, Reporting & Dashboards, Integrations, Governance and Security. Integration with vROps Before you can […]

An IT story of getting out of burn-out and depression

August 10, 2020 Kim Bottu 1

I have never been good at talking about my own feelings. To expose myself in such a way always makes me feel vulnerable and I don’t like feeling vulnerable. However, after reading some very humble stories from people in IT having to deal with burnout and suffering from depression, I have decided to share my experiences as well, and more importantly, how I got out of it all. The beginning I used to work as a systems engineer for a bigger global enterprise. For the first time in my life, I would work with VMware technology such as vCenter server and VMware View. Not only would I have to keep all systems healthy in the office I was working, but […]

Using the VMware Lifecycle Manager 8.1 API to deploy vROps, vRLI, vRA and vRNI

June 10, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

Introduction Creating the API calls I needed in my lab took me quite some time. I probably could have saved a lot of time by first looking at the JSON files VRSLCM can export out of the box. But of course, I didn’t. vRSLCM is able to export a JSON file for any environment you have setup using vRSLCM. In this blog post I want to show you how I did what I did and where you can find the bits and pieces I needed to create my API calls. The easy way If you want to see a JSON file of a real world deployed environment in vRSLCM, why not export it from the UI? That is right, the […]

Host troubleshooting, migrations and all that.. and Runecast

June 6, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

I have done my fair share of vSphere installations, migrations and upgrades and some of the main causes for delays, is that often people just assume that all hosts in a cluster or across clusters are running the same version of ESXi. Or that all existing hosts in a cluster or across clusters, which you plan on upgrading, are running on hardware that supports the required version of ESXi.Yeah, assumptions… downward spiral, right there. Runecast benefits I have often wished for a tool which would allow me to easily verify if the physical environment is up to being upgraded. But I was just gobsmacked when I had a look on how Runecast Analyzer handles this. Just have a look at […]

How the vExpert program improves my life

June 1, 2020 Kim Bottu 1

When I embarked on the journey to become a vExpert, I did so because of a wish to find like minded people, people who like working with the same technology and like to share stories about how they have accomplished awesome things using VMware technology. I really wanted to connect to people who have the same professional goals in life, and who could inspire me professionally. Professionally… At my previous employer, certification was not encouraged, and even though I knew I wanted to get certified, no one was cheering me on. Getting to the next step in my career seemed daunting to me. I discovered very fast that the vExpert community is more than just a word. A lot of […]

Create an alert in vRLI for missing vSAN 7 File Shares

April 7, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

vSAN File services, they are finally here. However in my nested lab, after rebooting the vSAN cluster, often the file services do start but the shares remain unavailable. A good state of the File Services look like this: When all goes well, your File Services Shares should have been created at about the same time. In my test example, I have setup 2 different File Shares. So far so good. However, when I shutdown my vSAN cluster, going through the motions of putting my nested hosts into Maintenance Mode and shutting down the hosts, and then boot the hosts up again and get them out of maintenance mode, the File Services do come back up, but somehow the File Shares […]

Using the API to add a new certificate to a vRLI cluster

March 13, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

When you have to replace certificates on multiple vRLI clusters, using the API might be a better way to change them on all your cluster nodes. Prerequisites You will need to prepare a certificate with a subject alternative name (SAN) for each of the cluster members and the Internal Load Balancer (ILB).You can use this article as a guide. How to Take note that I do not know if this is officially supported, but in my tests it works. Use a REST API client and connect to the ILB IP and request a session token. Make sure to add the credentials to the body of your request. When you post the command, a session token will be generated. You need […]