Category Archives: Lab Infrastructure

Did You Know VMCA Can Issue Certificates for Other Services?

Posted on September 18, 2025 by brian.wuchner

VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA) is used within vSphere to secure connections between vCenter Server and ESXi hosts, but what if we need certificates for other systems? In a previous post, I used group policy to add the VMCA Root CA … Continue reading →

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Simplifying Certificate Trust in Multi-Lab Environments

Posted on September 14, 2025 by brian.wuchner

In my lab I have a jump box that I typically use for management. It is joined to active directory and automatically trusts my primary CA root certificate. This CA issued the Machine SSL certificate for my vCenter Server, so … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab Infrastructure, Scripting, Virtualization | 1 Comment

Simulating vCenter Server Connection Failures with iptables

Posted on September 1, 2025 by brian.wuchner

I was recently testing an application and wanted to see how it would behave if its connection to vCenter Server was interrupted. Would the process auto-recover? Would I need to restart a service? To find out, I simulated a connection … Continue reading →

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Blocking Internet Access in a vCenter Lab with Selective Proxy Access

Posted on August 29, 2025 by brian.wuchner

While troubleshooting a vCenter issue, I needed to replicate an environment where the vCenter Server had no internet access. This scenario is often seen in production but can be tricky to reproduce in a lab. This post will outline how … Continue reading →

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MongoDB on Ubuntu: Replica Sets, LDAP, and Aria Operations

Posted on August 25, 2025 by brian.wuchner

Last year I shared a series of posts walking through how to set up and monitor MongoDB with Aria Operations. For reference, here are those articles: When I originally created those posts, Mongo DB had not yet added support for … Continue reading →

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