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Determining new VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) & VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) license usage in vSphere 8.0 Update 2b

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vSphere 8.0 Update 2b was just released last week and with this release, customers can now take advantage of the new included 100 GiB trial vSAN storage capacity for each deployed VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) core for use with vSAN!

Note: If you would like to understand how much vSAN storage you are entitled to (100GiB for VVF and 1TiB for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)), check out the new inventory and calculator script in KB 95927 (brownfield) and KB 96426 (greenfield) for more details.

In addition to installing and/or updating your vCenter Server to vSphere 8.0 Update 2b, you will also need to login to Customer Connect to download your new VVF and/or VCF license keys that will activate your vSAN entitlement.

I have already received questions on how to determine whether an ESXi host has been licensed with the new VVF and/or VCF license keys and which you can do so by using the vSphere UI by navigating to Administration->Licensing->Licenses->Assets->Hosts or vSAN Clusters and using the various filters, but this can be time consuming when you have a large environment with various license editions.

This is where automation and vSphere API can help!

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VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) v0.8.0

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I am very excited to share that we have just released our long awaited v0.8.0 of the VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA)! 🥳


The v0.8.0 release has been in the works for quite some time and because of the major architectural change in migrating to the VMware Tanzu Sources for Knative, we also needed to update all example functions to reflect the new event payload schema, refresh all user documentation and our VEBA website, which only performed during our spare cycles and typically in the evenings!

It has certainly been a long journey and I could not have done it without my colleague Robert Guske, who has been a machine in updating all of our documentation to make it easier to consume for both our existing and new users. 🙌

Last but now least, I want to give a huge thanks 👏 to my original partner in crime Michael Gasch, while he is no longer with VMware, he was still kind enough to help answer some questions while hitting some release automation issue over the weekend and was instrumental in helping me get the v0.8.0 release out!

Changelog for VEBA v0.8.0:

  • Updated Software Build-of-Material (SBOM) (See the VEBA BOM for detailed changes)
  • Replaced VMware Event Router with VMware Tanzu Sources for Knative
  • All VEBA endpoints now protected with basic authentication
  • New Google Chat notification function
  • Migrated function container images from Google (GCR) to Github (GHCR)
  • Updated all PowerShell/PowerCLI functions with the latest PS/PCLI base images
  • Improved website documentation
  • Various Bug Fixes and Code Improvement

Download for VEBA v0.8.0: 

Automate the deployment & initial configuration of Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager (formally vRSLCM) 

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I love writing automation, especially for deploying a consistent and repeatable environment for testing or learning purposes. I recently deployed the latest Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.14 (formally vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager or vRSLCM) manually using the graphical Easy Installer method, which was easy and straight forward.

Unlike the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) installer, which includes both a UI and CLI option, the latter for automation purposes. I found that ASLCM only provides an interactive UI method for deployment and I was interested in an automated solution. Similar to the VCSA installer, the extracted contents of the ASLCM ISO is the installer and OVA image, so I figured I could just deploy using PowerCLI and I could start playing with ASLCM!

Automating the ASLCM OVA deployment was trivial, but what I discovered was that there was different behavior between using the Easy Installer versus just deploying the OVA and powering it on. I observed that I was not able to login using the password that I had set in the OVF properties for the admin@local user ...

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