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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. ...

Upgrading your VCF Fleet Management from version 9.0.0 to 9.0.1 is a relatively modest patch update, but careful execution ensures minimal disruption. Below is a step-by-step guide to walk you through the process safely. Download the Patch Download the patch by going to Fleet Management -> Binary Management -> Patch Binaries -> Select fleet management -> Download. Upload & Stage the Patch Once the download is complete go to Settings -> System Patches -> New Patch ...

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9) introduces a streamlined deployment experience with the VCF Installer appliance, replacing the older Cloud Builder model. One of the core components in that workflow is VCF Operations, which provides unified lifecycle, monitoring, and fleet management across your private cloud environment. In this guide, we walk through deploying VCF Operations 9 from an OVA, detailing prerequisites, deployment steps, and post-deploy tasks. 1. Prerequisites & Preparation Before you deploy, make sure these items are in place: ...

When upgrading the VCF Operations Fleet Management appliance to 9.0.1, you might hit a reboot surprise: vPostgres fails to start, and the fleet-management certificate is regenerated. You’ll see journal errors like: pg_ctl: could not open PID file "/var/vmware/vpostgres/current/pgdata/postmaster.pid": Permission denied systemd[1]: vpostgres.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE Broadcom’s KB confirms the symptoms and provides the manual steps to fix permissions on the Postgres data dir and to normalize the regenerated cert/key filenames, followed by service restarts. (manual steps) Fix pgdata permissions chmod 700 /var/vmware/vpostgres/current/pgdata/ Normalize the regenerated certificate & key in /opt/vmware/vlcm/cert by renaming the timestamped server.crt.* / server.key.* back to server.crt / server.key, then restart services (nginx, vrlcm-server.service) and verify status/logs. One-shot automated remediation (idempotent) Run this as root on the Fleet Management appliance (e.g., via SSH). It: ...

I wanted to cache everything behind Cloudflare and stop worrying about PHP, MySQL, and plugin drift on my backup site cosmin.gq. I tried one-click export plugins (both the free and paid Simply Static), but I couldn’t get a clean export that behaved like the live site. So I rolled up my sleeves and wrote a Bash script that: crawls the site using the official sitemaps (including .gz children), mirrors HTML + assets incrementally, cleans up quirks like ?p= permalinks, generates a small search index (no dependencies, no bs4), adds a lightweight lightbox for images, and serves it all from Cloudflare Workers Static Assets with a smart router that understands /path, /path/, /path.html, and /path/index.html. Below is the story of how each section of the script came to be, what went wrong, what I learned, and why each piece is there. ...