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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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Quick Tip - Verifying vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) Backup Status

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I recently found out that my vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) scheduled backups had been failing for some time but I was not aware. While there is a default vCenter Server alarm for failed VCSA backups, however it is only visible when you have selected the vCenter Server inventory object in left hand navigation, which is not a typical item that I select as shown in the screenshot below.


Furthermore, I was actually logged into the VCSA's VMware Appliance Management Interface (VAMI) not too long ago while updating to a newer patch release and I had checked to see if backups were successful, which I thought they were when looking at the "Status" column.


It was not until I took a closer look, did I realize that the schedule backup activity log is ordered from oldest to newest, meaning what I saw was a backup that has happend a long time ago and not necessary the latest backup attempt. I found this to be a really strange UX since as you would need to page to very end to check whether the latest backups were succssful or not.

Note: I have already filed an internal bug to ask for the VCSA schedule backup activity to be ordered from newest to oldest, so users can quickly see if the latest backups are successful or not.

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Quick Tip - Easily identify Virtual Appliances using vSphere API

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VMware Virtual Appliances (VA) that are built from either VMware or from our 3rd party eco-system will typically include useful metadata about the solution including name, version, vendor and other details.

Using the vSphere UI, you can locate this information when selecting a VM under Configure->Settings->vApp Options and below is an example for a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA).


Note: If you deploy a VA directly to an ESXi host, these VA properties will not be available as the vApp capability is a vCenter Server feature.

I recently had an inquiry from a customer with over 10K+ VMs that was looking to identify this information and obviously, using the vSphere UI would be a non-starter and was looking for a way to automate this.

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