Posts

Getting Started With Packer to Create vSphere Templates – Part 5 – Bringing it Together!

Here we are, Part 5! If you have stuck with me through this series, thank you for taking the time. If not, you can catchup with Parts 1-4 by searching my blog! I wanted to end this series with something different to just text, code and images. So I am going to show you the end to end template deployment process with video’s using user defined variables but with a few environment variables in the Linux example.

Tuesday, August 3, 2021 | 2 minutes Read

Getting Started With Packer to Create vSphere Templates – Part 4 – Blocks

Welcome to Part 4 of the Packer Series! In this part we will look at putting together all the block and files we need to deploy a template! As we have touched upon in earlier parts, we have multiple blocks and files available to us that can be used to make up a complete configuration. We will walk through a complete Source and Build Block here using user defined variables to complete the build. In the final part of this series, I will use a combination of user and environment variables to give you an idea of how you may use this outside of a lab.

Wednesday, July 14, 2021 | 6 minutes Read

Getting Started With Packer to Create vSphere Templates – Part 3 – Variables

Welcome back to part 3 of my Creating vSphere Templates using Packer series, if you missed part 1 or 2, you can find them here and here. In part 3 we will explore variables! Why would we use variables? Variables allow you to specify customisations to your templating code without having to edit your actual build files. This can be useful when you are reusing code for multiple templates. There are multiple types of variables that can be used, but we will talk about 2 types of input variables in this blog. They are what I will refer to as; User defined variables and Environment variables. We will talk about both during the blog post and the use cases for each.

Tuesday, July 6, 2021 | 6 minutes Read

Getting Started With Packer to Create vSphere Templates – Part 2 - Answer Files and Scripts

Welcome to part 2 of my Getting Started with Packer series, if you missed part 1, you can find it here. In part 2, we will take a look through an important part of creating your vSphere templates; Answer Files and scripts. Firstly, we will be looking at a couple of example scripts that can be used to configure your operating system before its turned into your template. We will then move on to answer files that allow an automated, non user prompting installation of your operating system. These answer files provide configuration details during the operating system installation.

Tuesday, June 22, 2021 | 8 minutes Read

Getting Started With Packer to Create vSphere Templates - Part 1

Virtual Machines Templates, why? Templates are a great way to achieve consistent, repeatable and fast virtual machine (VM) deployments, be it an on-premise vSphere environment or cloud based environment. Having up to date VM templates for each of the operating systems you use, is key to being able to deploy infrastructure quickly and easily across multiple platforms. In this series of blog posts, I will be focusing on deploying virtual machine templates in vSphere, specifically vSphere 7, using a product called Packer by HashiCorp. Packer is an Infrastructure as Code tool specifically for template management.

Tuesday, June 15, 2021 | 6 minutes Read

Upgrading Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 8.3.1 to 8.4

I recently started looking at prerequisites to a vSphere 7 upgrade, by reviewing any associated upgrades that might be needed. VMware Site Recovery Manager was one product that needed to be upgraded prior to this. I decided I would fire up a quick nested setup in my HomeLab to run through the process before hand and share the process! This nested lab consists of two ESXi 6.7 nested hosts, two vCenter 6.7 VCSA’s and two SRM 8.3.1 appliances, with the VCSA’s and SRM appliances having custom CA certificates installed.

VMware
SRM

Tuesday, May 25, 2021 | 3 minutes Read

Upgrade vRealize Operations Manager (vROPS) 7.5 to 8.4

Recently I tested a vRealize Operation Manager (vROps) upgrade from version 7.5 to 8.4 ahead of a vCenter 7.0.2 upgrade and thought I would share the process. Something worth noting with this upgrade. vROps 7.5 is based on a SUSE Linux OS, 8.4 is Photon OS. Before we install the 8.4 update, make sure you back up any customised content and install the vRealize Operations Manager Pre-Upgrade to 8.4.0 Assessment Tool! This will inform you of any content that is being removed that could affect your metrics/content and advise of any upgrade issues.

vROps

Tuesday, May 18, 2021 | 2 minutes Read

Updating PowerCLI and Cleaning Up Old Versions

Following the recent PowerCLI 12.3 release, I’m sure many will be rushing to make use of some of the great new additions which you can find information on here. I thought I would quickly show the process of upgrading to the latest version whilst uninstalling any older versions you might still have installed. Partly because I’m playing with creating video content at the moment! Credit to @colinwestwater for his article on how to clean up old versions, blog post here.

PowerCLI

Friday, April 9, 2021 | 1 minute Read

Enabling Native KMS in vSphere 7.0 Update 2

Some time back I wrote about setting up and enabling a HyTrust Key Management setup for vSphere to make use of VM and vSAN encryption. Following the release of vSphere 7.0 Update 2, VMware have introduced native key management capabilities! This is a great feature as you no longer require a potentially expensive separate key management solution to make use of vSphere’s encryption offerings. Lets take a look at this new capability by heading over to the Key Providers menu on your vCenter object, and selecting ‘Add Native Key Provider’:

Thursday, March 25, 2021 | 2 minutes Read

Get, Set and Remove Perennial Reservations Using PowerShell Functions

Having recently had to do some work with RDM perennial reservations I looked into ways to make this less of a manual headache. There are plenty of examples out there for doing this, which I took as a basis to make a PowerShell function. If anything it was a great way to refresh my PowerShell skills and an opportunity to learn some new skills. Note: Although this has been tested in my environment, please make sure you test it appropriately before running against a production environment!

Tuesday, March 9, 2021 | 3 minutes Read