HTTPS Ingress with Enterprise PKS
Kubernetes is an awesome technology, in my humble opinion, and one of the best ways to adopt it and begin to use it in a production-worthy manner is with VMware’s Enterprise PKS. By using Enterprise PKS, you get some truly great additional value by leveraging NSX-T for the networking and security components. One of those things that comes in so handy is the ingress controller capabilities of NSX-T in which you don’t need to go roll your own.
pks-dns: Automated DNS registration for PKS Clusters
VMware’s Enterprise PKS is a great solution for quickly and easily stamping out Kubernetes clusters. It really makes the process simple and repeatable while bringing additional benefits like scaling, upgrades, and auto-healing thanks to the likes of BOSH–PKS’ right-hand man. It also leverages (or can) NSX-T which provides tons of additional value. All of these pieces come together to form what is often touted as a “turnkey solution”. However, ever since I first started working with the product, something has always bugged me and remained in the back of my mind like a chime ringing in the distance.
Optimize-VMwarePKS: A PowerShell script for all your VMware PKS deployment needs
Ever since VMware PKS (now called Enterprise PKS) came onto the market over a year ago, it’s been a big hit. With it, you get upstream Kubernetes, NSX-T, an enterprise-class container registry, automation of the entire K8s cluster creation process, and lots more all on top of the de facto private cloud platform of vSphere. It’s truly becoming the way organizations are standardizing on K8s cluster instantiation, upgrade, and management on-premises.
Installing vRealize Automation software components as a specific user
Since I’ve been working with software components in vRealize Automation (vRA), one of the difficulties I see come up time and time again in Windows environments is the need to run a specific command or component with specific credentials. This is quite common even outside of the scope of vRA. There are multiple ways to go about doing this when talking about PowerShell and I won’t cover them all here. But sometimes, for one reason or not, those methods don’t work—especially when dealing with some specific programs that require elevation.
Deploying VMware Agents with Ansible
Although there are numerous deployment and config management tools out there, none have had as much traction and continued success as Ansible. Purchased by Red Hat in October 2015, Ansible continues to gain steam in every corner. One of the great things about it and keys to its success is its agentless design. Rather that installing and maintaining a persistent agent inside your managed node, Ansible uses SSH/WinRM to conduct its operations.
How to Ask for Help on Tech Forums
All of us need help at some point, and it’s only too common to reach out to others to ask for help. Before you do that, however, you need to understand some basic rules. These rules exist not only to maintain a sense of courtesy and respect, but to ultimately get you the best help possible. While most of this wisdom is applicable to any online technology forum, it is specifically geared to the VMware Technology Network (VMTN), VMware’s official online community.
New Features in Sovlabs Property Toolkit: Entity Assignment
It’s no secret that I’ve been a huge proponent of the SovLabs Property Toolkit module. So much so that my new motto is, “don’t leave home without it.” I’ve written fairly extensively about some of its power in articles here and here, but today I’m really excited. No, SUPER excited because the guys and gals at SovLabs have just added a whole bunch of new features that make this indispensable to anyone running vRA.
Veeam Backup-as-a-Service, Part 1
Today I want to introduce and provide a walk-through on how to use what I think is one of the coolest modules SovLabs has produced to date for vRealize Automation: Backup-as-a-Service (or BaaS for short). BaaS is one of those pie-in-the-sky dreams for many CMP owners and operators and, frankly, the aim of lots of other companies hoping to give a real self-service-type experience to users inside a CMP. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of it, they all come up pretty short—until SovLabs entered the game, that is.
Drop-Down Lists in vRealize Automation, from Static to Dynamic to External
Today, I wanted to spend some time returning to a basic principle of vRealize Automation (vRA) which is central to creating customized request forms and limiting blueprint sprawl. This is also a subject which is often requested from users. Unfortunately, those unfamiliar with vRA often think this type of customization requires other forms of complex, expensive integrations or even worse, long professional services engagements. Specifically what I’m talking about is the ability to generate drop-down lists when requesting a catalog item, as well as make those drop-downs dynamic in nature.
Using vRA Software Components and binding any custom property
Software components (SCs) are pretty neat in vRA (although you pay a pretty penny for them), but they have some serious shortcomings. One of the really cool abilities of them is to “bind” or let a property (variable, really) assume the value of something else inside that blueprint. This makes scripts much more dynamic, but one of those shortcomings is not all properties are available to bind. In this article, I’ll give you an easy workaround that makes binding to any custom property which gets passed into the machine a possibility.