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Automated Lab Deployment Script updated to support VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.1

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I finally got some time to update my Automated VMware Cloud Foundation Lab (VCF) Deployment script to support the latest VCF 5.1 release as this has been requested by a number of folks both internally and externally.

In addition to updating some of the new resource requirements such as increasing the Nested ESXi vSAN capacity drive from 60GB to 100GB, I was also thinking about some of the feedback that I had received internally from one of our engineers and that gave me some ideas on how to further stream the deployment using automation. I also came up with a few new ideas that I have added to the script, some of which I will cover in a future blog post 😁


The first thing you will notice is that you can now specify the number of ESXi hosts to deploy both for the VCF Management Domain as well as for a Workload Domain.

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Tips & Tricks for deploying VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) using Holodeck

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The VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Holodeck Toolkit has become quite popular amongst our field teams for quickly spinning up a fully self-contained VCF environment, running on just a single physical ESXi host for educational and hands on experience.

Internally, we have a Holodeck Google Space which has been getting quite busy where folks can ask questions but also share their own experiences and setup using Holodeck. I had noticed there were some common questions and themes that were coming up along with some neat tips and tricks from various folks, some of which I also found quite insightful.

I know some of these tips and tricks will also benefit our customers and partners looking to deploy VCF using Holodeck, so I figure I put together a consolidated list that would benefit everyone. If you have other Holodeck tips and tricks, feel free to leave a comment and happy to keep updating this page.

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Google Chat space notification for failed vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) backups using VEBA

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It is always good idea to verify that your vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) backups are occurring and if there are any failures, you are notified about them immediately!

As alluded to at the end of that blog post, you can easily build event-driven automation using the popular VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) solution, triggering notifications based on several types of VCSA backup events:

  • com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.failed.event
  • com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.finished.event
  • com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.start.event

I recently built a PowerShell function that would send a notification to a Google Chat space by enabling their incoming webhook integration as you can seen from the screenshot below:


While the message customization is not as extensive as using Slack (e.g. supporting advanced layouts and emoji), it does get the job done and you will know immediately when a backup has failed or when it has started or has completed.

Note: For existing VEBA users (pre-v0.8 release), the function.yaml needs to be updated to trigger off of the subject keyword rather than the type, which is due to replacing the event router with Tanzu Sources for vSphere. You also need to ensure the prefix of "com.vmware.vsphere" is removed along with trailing "v0" as this is the next syntax for vCenter Events once VEBA v0.8 is released.

spec:
  broker: default
  filter:
    attributes:
      subject: com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.failed.event