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Listing all Events for vCenter Server

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I had a conversation with one of our VMware Cloud on AWS field leaders a couple of weeks ago at reInvent on his initial experience with the vCenter Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) Fling. There were lots great feedback but one thing that stood out to me which looks to have been a barrier to getting started was being able to figure out a specific vCenter Event and its respective identifier. Although the list of "default" vCenter Events are documented in the vSphere API, it is definitely not the first place most folks would go to look nor is it very intuitive to browse.

To be honest, this is not a unique ask for VEBA. I have also seen this requests come up from customers who are automating vCenter Alarms, which can also be based off of vCenter Events and the same question has come up on before. One challenge with such a request is that the number and the types of vCenter Events will vary from customer to customer depending on the number of 2nd and 3rd party solutions deployed, not to mention it will also vary from version to version. In addition, as a customer, you can also publish your own custom Events into vCenter Server which makes this difficult to provide a single list that would cover all possible scenarios.

Ultimately, this ask is completely valid and I started to look at the vSphere API to see if there was something that could help. It did not take look before I stumbled onto the EventDescription which is part of the EventManager, which provides a nice registry for all currently registered vCenter Events. Time for some Automation 🙂

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Configure NSX-T Enhanced Data path / Network Stack (ENS) for Nested ESXi

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After publishing my Running Nested ESXi, NSX-V or NSX-T on top of NSX-T article which actually turned out to be quite popular, I received an interesting question on whether ENS for NSX-T could also be configured within a Nested ESXi deployment? I was a little familiar with ENS, which I will explain in a second. However, I was not completely sure about the benefits of running ENS in a Nested environment.

With the help from my friend Frank Escaros-Buechsel, who actually works in our NFV group at VMware. Frank helped validate the instructions but he also provided some additional insights on why this could be useful in a lab setup for verifying configuration and behaviors when additional tuning maybe required. If you are NOT running NFV-based workloads, ENS is not something you need to configure when running NSX-T using Nested ESXi.

So what is ENS?  Enhanced Network Stack (ENS) also referred to as Enhanced Data Path is an NSX-T capability which was first introduced with NSX-T 2.3. ENS is specifically designed for Network Function Virtualization (NFV) workloads that require a high performance data path. Such workloads include Telco, 5G and IoT based deployments where improved packet throughput is critical for the responsiveness of these applications.

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Packer reference for building PhotonOS Virtual Appliance using OVF properties 

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I was introduced to HashiCorp Packer several years back by Timo  Tsugliani, who if you are not following on Twitter, you are missing a TON of really useful nuggets which this guys shares both VMware/IT related and cool stuff. I am constantly learning about new things things from Timo and this guys is just a wealth of knowledge if you get the chance to work with him. At the time, I had played with Packer for a bit but did not have an actual use case for it, so I mostly forgot about it.

Fast forward a few years later and with recent projects like the vCenter Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) Fling, I have really spent time learning about Packer in greater depth and I now realize how powerful Packer is for building various artifacts including VMware-based templates that is not only easy but consistently from source control.  It took me awhile to get to the aha moment but now I use Packer for so many different things to help simplify my life.

With the recent open sourcing of our VEBA Fling which includes the use of PhotonOS and Packer, I was reminded of a blog series that I did earlier on how to build your own Linux and/or Windows Virtual Appliance using OVF properties (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). I realized it would have been useful to have an actual reference implementation on building a very simple PhotonOS Virtual Appliance that exercises some basic OVF properties so folks could quickly get started beyond the manual steps that were documented.  I was also motivated by a chat I had with Luc Dekens (Godfather of PowerCLI) last week on some of the Automation he was trying to with PhotonOS and I figured this might be something he and others could also benefit from.

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