Articles by Kim Bottu

VCF4, vSphere 7, vSAN7, vROps 8.1 and everything else!

March 10, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

Introduction The days where all applications ran from a couple of servers managed by a couple of administrators hidden away in the basement of an office building are coming to an end. Although a big chuck of traditional applications will continue to need traditional servers to run from, it cannot be ignored that containers have been changing the application landscape. More and more applications are running from containers in a distributed architecture. Because the business expects applications to be delivered when they are needed, not in 3 months from now. Agility drives business and this is no different for the applications that the business relies on, no one wants to wait for an extended provisioning time for setting up new […]

How to export and import vRLI alerts which make use of vROps fallback objects, into another datacentre, by using Postman

February 25, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

In case you are managing a multitude of datacentres and are relying on vROps and vRLI to monitor your environments, by now you have found out that some alerts are present in vROps and other alerts are present in vRLI. You can configure alerts in both products, but while you can export and import vROps alert definitions and symptom definitions created in environment A into environment B, this does not go as easily for vRLI when you are using vROps fallback objects . If you are not using fallback objects, you can disregard this post. Requirements vRLI vROps Postman or any other REST API client. I use Postman myself. Notepad ++ Create some alerts in vRLI Create some alerts in […]

New free Exam Prep Forums on VMware Learning Zone !

November 21, 2019 Kim Bottu 0

Are you planning to take some of the most popular VMware DCV certification exams, but have no one you can ask for advice on how to prepare? Starting next Monday, November 25th, you can join the DCV Foundations Exam Prep or the VCP-DCV Exam Prep Forums on the VMware Learning Zone and get some great advice on how to get ready for these exams.In these new forums, a group of vSphere experts, including Bilal and myself, will: Answer questions about exam objectives Recommend other complementary material and resources you can use to study Guide you on the areas where you need to improve Help review your study plan and give you recommendations More information to follow soon! Bilal and Kim!

Homelab part 2

September 22, 2019 Kim Bottu 1

Introduction Some months ago someone asked me if I was willing to share exactly how I have setup my nested lab environment. Back then I didn’t have the time, but tonight I am willing to make time to describe just that. So here is part 2 of my homelab post. Hardware – 1 x Supermicro SYS-E300-9D-8CN8TP– 1 x Sandisk Ultrafit 32GB USB 3.0– 1 x Samsung PM883 240 GB SATA 2.5″ 1.3DWPD– 2 x Samsung 970 EVO 1 TB NVMe M2 80mm– 2 x Crucial 64 GB ECC DDR4-2666 LR-DIMM, ECC As you can see, the seconds NVMe drive has been added to my lab. This was needed to get my vSAN lab to support erasure coding for Raid 5. […]

Generating SAN security certificate for NSX-T and PKS on Windows

July 22, 2019 Kim Bottu 0

A friend of mine had some problems generating certificates for NSX-T to be used with PKS. When he tried using the commands, from his mac, as instructed by https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Enterprise-PKS/1.2/vmware-enterprise-pks-12/GUID-generate-nsx-ca-cert.html , he would have error all over the place. For your information, afterwards we found out that the copy of the code generated some characters that the CLI didn’t like. Generating SAN certificates on Windows for NSX-T and PKS So I decided to generate the certificates in a different way, using the Windows version of OpenSSL. Obviously the code inthe VMware article will not really work, since that was created for linux type of platforms. Here is what we used to generate the certificate on Windows: Windows certificate creation A certificate […]

CAL! Center for Advanced Learning Advanced Architecture Course – Day 2

June 13, 2019 Kim Bottu 0

Outcome focussed The emphasis today was on VMware’s outcome focussed approach. Instead of focussing on technical solutions, the attention is directed towards what an organization wants to accomplish in order to be successful. What are the business needs and how can we help you reach these? This sounds easier than it is. Since most of us come from a technical background and we rarely get the opportunity to speak to C level and other business levels, we only receive information about the business needs and goals in the way that it is passed to us. Often this may be inaccurate. Exercises To help us get a better grasp on these differences, several exercises were presented to us which we had […]

CAL! Center for Advanced Learning Advanced Architecture Course – Day 1

June 11, 2019 Kim Bottu 0

Introduction Changing employer to one of the major players in the Benelux, has nice perks. One of these is being able to attend a course where there a specific prerequisites prior to be able to attend to it. The Advanced Architecture Course by the VMware Center for Advanced Learning is such a course. I had been hoping to be able to participate in it ever since I attended a presentation about it at VMware Empower last year and I am very happy that I have been giving the opportunity! Day 1 Day one started very early. We had to be at the campus at seven AM for all the formalities and administration. A pity no one thought about giving us […]

Home lab setup, part 1

May 31, 2019 Kim Bottu 2

Ah, we all do love our home labs and there are some pretty impressive ones out there. But for my own needs, I can run almost everything nested, so I saw no need to invest “that much” money. Currently my home lab exists out of a single Supermicro E300 9D 8CN8TP node. Hardware Some people have asked me how I have set it up. So here is a small blog post about my current setup. Hardware:– 1 x Supermicro SYS-E300-9D-8CN8TP– 1 x Sandisk Ultrafit 32GB USB 3.0– 1 x Samsung PM883 240 GB SATA 2.5″ 1.3DWPD– 1 x Samsung 970 EVO 1 TB NVMe M2 80mm – 2 x Crucial 64 GB ECC DDR4-2666 LR-DIMM, ECCI do have a second […]