In the continuing spirit of Terraforming all things, when I started to look into Ansible I wanted a way to have the base Control Node installed in a repeatable and consistent way. The setup and configuration of Ansible can be tricky and what I learnt in configuring the Ansible Control Node is that there can […] Read More
Quick Fix: Deploying Multiple Ubuntu 18.04 VMs From Template with DHCP Results Same in IP Allocation
In the continuing work I’ve been doing with Terraform, i’ve come across a number of gotchyas when working with VM Templates and deploying them on mass. The nature of the work is that i’m creating and destroying VMs often. Generally speaking I like using Static IP addresses but for the project i’m working on I […] Read More
There is still a Sting in the Tail for Cloud Service Providers
This week it gave me great pleasure to see my former employer, Zettagrid announced a significant expansion in their operations, with the addition of three new hosting zones to go along with their existing four zones in Australia and Indonesia. They also announced the opening of operations in the US. Apart from the fact I […] Read More
Using Variable Maps to Dynamically Deploy vSphere VMs with Terraform
I’ve been working on a project over the last couple of weeks that has enabled me to sharpen my Terraform skills. There is nothing better than learning by doing and there is also nothing better than continuously improving code through more advanced constructs and methods. As this project evolved it became apparent that I would […] Read More
Veeam Vault #11 – VBR, Veeam ONE, VAC Releases plus Important Update for Service Providers
Welcome to the 11th edition of Veeam Vault and the first one for 2019! It’s been more than a year since the last edition, however in light of some important updates that have been released over the past couple of weeks and months, I thought it was time to open up the Vault again! Getting […] Read More
Quick Fix – OS Not Found Deploying Windows Template with Terraform
During the first plan execution of a new VM based on a Windows Server Core VM Template, my Terraform plan timed out on Guest Customizations. The same plan had worked without issue previously with an existing Windows Template, so I was a little confused as to what had gone wrong. When I checked the console […] Read More
Assigning vSphere Tags with Terraform for Policy Based Backups
vSphere Tags are used to add attributes to VMs so that they can be used to help categorise VMs for further filtering or discovery. vSphere Tags have a number of use cases of which Melissa has a great blog post here on the power of vSphere Tags, their configuration and their application. Veeam fully supports […] Read More
Deploying a Kubernetes Sandbox on VMware with Terraform
Terraform from HashiCorp has been a revelation for me since I started using it in anger last year to deploy VeeamPN into AWS. From there it has allowed me to automate lab Veeam deployments, configure a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC networking and configure NSX vCloud Director Edges. The time saved by utilising the power […] Read More
Quick Fix – ESXi loses all Network Configuration… but still runs?
I had a really strange situation pop up in one of my lab environments over the weekend. vSAN Health was reporting that one of the hosts had lost networking connectivity to the rest of the cluster. This is something i’ve seen intermittently at times so waited for the condition to clear up. When it didn’t […] Read More
The Separation of Dev and Ops is Upon Us!
Apart from the K word, there was one other enduring message that I think a lot of people took home from VMworld 2019. That is, that Dev and Ops should be considered as seperate entities again. For the best part of the last five or so years the concept of DevOps, SecOps and other X-Ops […] Read More