VMware

Just a quick little post this morning! Anyone who works with the vRealize Automation APIs should definitely check out Grant Orchard and Roman Tarnavski’s awesome little side project, Platypus. It only took me a couple of minutes to get it running on my MacBook - here’s how! Download and install AppCatalyst Open a new terminal window cd /opt/vmware/appcatalyst/ Create a new VM called “photon" appcatalyst vm create photon Power it on

As you will see the upgrade is simple and even though its early days I haven’t seen anything that has been broken! If you are interested in seeing an example of the new utilization dashboard scroll to the bottom of this article. Upgrading from 6.1 I will be doing this upgrade on a VA so to begin with I will need the vRealize Operations Manager - Virtual Appliance Operating System upgrade .

vRealize Operations 6.2 was released last night and is now available for download! Looking at what’s new very quickly there are some good new enhancements but when you compare this to the 6.1 release it’s perhaps a little light, nevertheless there appears to be some new cool features and enhancements to be had in this version. There does not appear to be any sizing/scale increases. Upgrading from existing 6.1 versions can be done via a .

For the last few months and certainly very recently (at the London VMUG meeting) I have had the chance to talk to peers and #vExperts and share “war stories” with regards to vRealize Operations Manager. What has become a consistent theme in all the stories is just how much compute resources vROps requires when you “go big” and not just what is clearly defined in the sizing spreadsheet. For example some of the large deployments I have either been involved in or heard about (to monitor upwards and beyond of 30000 VMs) required the deployment of Large vROps nodes.

A series of webcasts on vRealize Operations Manager 6.x, helping you learn about anything and everything about the solution. Some of the examples include, vROps Policies, Alert Definitions, Automated Action Framework, integration to third party etc. This would include power point and live demonstrations. The session would range anywhere between 60 to 90 minutes. With 100+ registrations and more than 70 live attendees, it was definitely a great start to this series.

If you use the in-built vRealize Orchestrator instance shipped with the vRealize Automation appliance then you might run into this issue when working with the REST client: Connection pool shut down (Workflow:Get-IdentityToken / Scripting (item3)#14) The vRA appliance version I have (6.2 - note to self, need to update lab!) includes the plugin version 1.0.4 for REST. According to the release notes, this was fixed in 1.0.5 - typical! So the solution is to upgrade the REST API plugin 🙂

I use mind maps quite a lot for study, I find the visual representation of info makes it a lot easier for me to remember! Below is a mind map I created for learning the roles in vRealize Automation, which I used during my presentation for #vBrownBag on VCP6-CMA objective 2. You can download a PDF version here: vRealize Automation Roles Mind Map

Apologies in advance if this is post is a jumbled nonsense, I’m still way too excited! This morning I woke to the news that I have passed my VCDX-CMA! This was my second attempt at VCDX and although the first failure was a painful experience, the lessons learned from it were invaluable to take into the defence the second time around. Failing doesn’t have to be a negative experience - if there is one thing that I will take from the VCDX program it is that there is ALWAYS more I need to learn, and I can always do better.

Wednesday I had lined up several sessions so I was quick to get along to my first session - Operational Remediation with vRealize Operations… Tying it All Together - #MGT5735. The session was excellent and gave a great overview and introduction to what is possible with remediation in vROps 6.1. Big thanks to Chima Njaka for this session. Aside from a few other sessions I spent a lot of the afternoon in the VMUG lounge with my colleagues from @xtravirt (see pic below) and meeting lots of other folk from the around the globe (this is what makes this conference so very great for me), putting faces to twitter handles for the first time and so on.

@vaficionado) – if that list of names doesn’t fill you with confidence for vRA.Next, then I suggest you follow them on twitter and trust me that it’s a crack team! So, my highlights: Completely automated deployment…almost. The deployment of appliances and installation of IaaS components and pre-requisites will be wizard driven, the Window Servers will need to exist and have an agent installed, and the MSSQL server will also need to be installed.