Category Archives: Lab Infrastructure

Troubleshooting a “Dead Timeout” NVMe Device on ESX

Posted on August 13, 2026 by brian.wuchner

I’ve been spending some time working with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 in my lab environment. The lab consists of several nested ESXi hosts that use NFS storage provided by a virtual machine. The VM providing the NFS storage, in … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab Infrastructure, Virtualization | Leave a comment

Troubleshooting Aria Automation Orchestrator Deployment

Posted on June 17, 2026 by brian.wuchner

While deploying VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator 8.18.1 in standalone mode through Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager (LCM), I encountered the following error during configuration: The deployment completed successfully, I was able to login to Orchestrator and it looked healthy, but the … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab Infrastructure, Virtualization | Leave a comment

Building a TinyCore Linux OVA with Custom OVF Properties

Posted on June 2, 2026 by brian.wuchner

I’ve recently been interested in creating a TinyCore Linux virtual appliance. This OVA would allow for some customization, like hostname, IP address, default gateway, and DNS settings. I’ve posted about TinyCore Linux before, most recently 2 years ago: https://enterpriseadmins.org/blog/scripting/tinycore-15-virtual-machine-very-small-vm-for-testing/. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab Infrastructure, Scripting, Virtualization | Leave a comment

Telegraf Open Agent Updates and VCF Operations 9.1

Posted on May 22, 2026 by brian.wuchner

About a year ago, I published a post covering how to monitor a Raspberry Pi using the open source Telegraf agent and VMware Aria Operations: https://enterpriseadmins.org/blog/virtualization/monitoring-a-raspberry-pi-with-telegraf-and-aria-operations Recently, while rebuilding this configuration in a VCF 9.1 environment, I encountered a couple … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab Infrastructure, Scripting, Virtualization | Leave a comment

Using PowerCLI with Federated VCF 9.1 Authentication

Posted on May 18, 2026 by brian.wuchner

The VCF PowerCLI 9.1 release notes call out an interesting change to the Connect-VIServer cmdlet (https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vcf/vcf-9-0-and-later/9-1/release-notes/vmware-cloud-foundation-9-1-0-0-release-notes/what-s-new/whats-new-vcf-cli-api-sdk/vcf-powercli-changelog/vmware-vimautomation-core.html) Connect-VIServer– Added parameter ‘VcfApiToken’– Added parameter ‘VcfOAuthSecurityContext’ This change introduces native support for API token authentication in federated VCF environments, making non-interactive automation significantly … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab Infrastructure, Scripting, Virtualization | Leave a comment