Infrastructure. Automation. Cloud.

After years of running my tech blog on WordPress, I finally pulled the trigger and migrated everything to Hugo — a blazing-fast static site generator — hosted on Cloudflare Workers. The result? A site that loads in milliseconds, costs nothing to host, and requires zero server maintenance. Here’s exactly how I did it, what went wrong, and what I’d do differently. Why Leave WordPress? WordPress served me well for years. But as my post count grew to 278 articles (mostly VMware VCF guides with dozens of screenshots each), the cracks started showing: ...

If you manage a VMware Aria Operations (formerly vROps) environment, you know how quickly alert fatigue can set in. In this guide i will focus specifically on the “Guest OS Experiencing CPU queue” alert. While helpful in identifying CPU-constrained VMs, it can quickly generate thousands of entries if you have a heavily over provisioned environment. Inspired by Brock Peterson’s excellent guide on Alert Hygiene, we are going to look at exactly how to cancel and delete these specific CPU queue alerts, both via the User Interface and programmatically via the API. ...

If you upgraded (or deployed) ESX/ESXi 9.0 in a lab and let the evaluation expire, you can end up in the classic chicken-and-egg situation: your vCenter is a VM, but you can’t power it on because the host is no longer licensed. With VCF / vSphere Foundation 9.0, licensing moved away from the old 25-character keys and into license files(normally handled through VCF Operations), which is great… until you don’t have VCF Ops up yet. (VMware Blogs) ...

If you spend enough time building out VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) in a lab, Proof of Concept, or nested environment, you will eventually hit “The Wall.” You know the hardware works. You know the ESXi versions will play nicely together. But SDDC Manager’s automated guardrails, the strict Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) checks and VVS (VMware Validated Solutions) interoperability validations throw up a red flag and stop your deployment or upgrade dead in its tracks. ...

In the world of infrastructure management, we are often forced to choose between the legacy reliability of the past and the high-speed automation of the future. For years, HCL BigFix (formerly IBM BigFix) has been the “Heavyweight Champion”—a massive, unmovable force in endpoint management. But a challenger has matured into a dominant player: Salt (SaltStack). If you are building a modern, self-healing infrastructure, the conversation shouldn’t just be about “patching.” It should be about reaction time, extensibility, and developer experience. ...

In the world of modern infrastructure operations, observability is only as good as the actions it drives. Integrating VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Operations (formerly Aria Operations) with ITSM platforms like ServiceNow is a critical step for many of my clients. It transforms passive monitoring into active incident management. However, as with any integration involving webhooks and external APIs, things don’t always go according to plan. Recently, while implementing a ServiceNow integration following standard deployment guides (kudos to Brock Peterson for his excellent documentation on ServiceNow Management Packs and Webhooks), I hit a roadblock. My instance was failing to send notifications, and the standard UI errors were vague. ...

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 brings a suite of powerful automation tools, and for many administrators, deploying the Operations Orchestrator (formerly vRO) as a standalone, external appliance provides greater flexibility and isolation. In this guide, I will walk you through the process of deploying VCF Operations Orchestrator 9 using the OVA method, followed by the necessary command-line configurations to get your authentication up and running. Prerequisites Before you begin, ensure you have the following: ...

Upgrading VCF Operations (formerly VMware Aria Operations) is a crucial task to ensure you’re using the latest features, security patches, and performance improvements. In this guide, we’ll walk through the step-by-step process of upgrading VCF Operations using a .pak file. Prerequisites Before starting the upgrade, ensure the following prerequisites are met: Backup the Existing Deployment: • Take a snapshot of all nodes in the Aria Operations (Master, Cloud proxies, and any other nodes). ...

Upgrading your SDDC Manager from version 9.0 to 9.0.1 is a relatively straightforward process when done through the integrated Lifecycle interface. Below is a guide to go over this patch upgrade. 1. Navigate to the Update Section Log into Operations → Fleet Management. Under Lifecycle → VCF Instances, select the VCF instance you want to upgrade. Look for the available update section. If you see SDDC Manager Update 9.0.1, click the Download icon. If no update appears, double-check your depot configuration and ensure your binary repositories are correctly set up. ...

Deploying the VCF Fleet Management (Operations / Fleet Manager) appliance using an OVA is a common approach when standing up a new VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 environment or re-deploying the component. Below is a refined guide covering the deployment, configuration, and integration steps. 1. Prerequisites & Downloading Binaries Before you deploy the OVA: Log into the Broadcom Support Portal and obtain the required binaries and OVA files for the Fleet Manager. Direct link can be found here. ...