Category Archives: Lab Infrastructure

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 →

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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 →

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An Unexpected Benefit of Application-Aware Backups: Finding and Fixing Database Bloat

Posted on January 2, 2026 by brian.wuchner

While working on my recent post about why crash-consistent VM backups aren’t always enough, I ran into an unexpected but very useful side effect of adding application-aware database backups. Once I started creating regular database dumps for my phpIPAM instances, … Continue reading →

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Why Crash-Consistent VM Backups Aren’t Always Enough

Posted on December 30, 2025 by brian.wuchner

In lab and small-scale environments, it’s common to rely almost entirely on VM-level backups. That’s exactly how my lab is built: a single virtual machine runs several services I depend on regularly, and it’s protected by a daily, CBT-enabled backup … Continue reading →

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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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