Category Archives: Scripting

Converting between guest OS serial number and VM UUID

Posted on June 18, 2024 by brian.wuchner

A customer recently asked me if it was possible to find a virtual machine BIOS serial number from a virtual machine object or vmx file. While looking into this, I found an old post that provided a very useful hint: … Continue reading →

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Finding the real NFS network

Posted on May 26, 2024 by brian.wuchner

I was recently helping a customer who had inherited an existing vSphere deployment that used NFS storage. They were tasked with migrating the old VMs to newer infrastructure, but they first wanted to find the NFS storage array backing the … Continue reading →

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Creating a MongoDB Replica Set

Posted on May 12, 2024 by brian.wuchner

I was recently looking at the Aria Operations Management Pack for MongoDB (https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Aria-Operations-for-Integrations/9.0/Management-Pack-for-MongoDB/GUID-73744E17-88DD-49A1-8B86-5BD896C874D8.html) and wanted to kick the tires in my vSphere-based lab. To be able to test this management pack, I wanted to deploy a three node MongoDB replica … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab Infrastructure, Scripting, Virtualization | 4 Comments

How to Build an Ubuntu 24.04 Template using Packer and vCenter Server Customization Specifications

Posted on May 3, 2024 by brian.wuchner

I’ve heard from several people who have highly recommended Packer (https://packer.io) to create standardized images, and with the recent release of Ubuntu 24.04 I decided now would be a good time to build a new template to try it out. … Continue reading →

Posted in Lab Infrastructure, Scripting, Virtualization | 3 Comments

Fine-Tuning Updates: Targeted Host Remediation with vSphere Lifecycle Manager

Posted on March 26, 2024 by brian.wuchner

In vSphere 7.0 functionality was introduced to be able to manage a cluster of ESXi hosts with a single image. In addition to being a bit easier to configure than the prior Update Manager Baselines, this feature also integrates with … Continue reading →

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