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Simulating the VMware Cloud on AWS API using Stoplight Prism Tool

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As more customers and partners on-board the VMware Cloud on AWS service, the topic of Automation has been coming up more frequently. There are a number of resources that are available to help users get started including here, here, here, here and here to just name a few.

Customers and partners can spin up 1-Node SDDC which includes the full stack (vSphere, vSAN and NSX-T), fully configured and ready for use for less than $8/hour (list price) and start exploring the rich APIs provided by the VMware Cloud on AWS service. Nothing beats playing with the real thing but we definitely have heard from customers and new developers that it would be nice to have the ability to test out some of the Automation prior to running against a real SDDC.

The VMware Cloud APIs is based on OpenAPI (formally Swagger) and has a very rich eco-system of tools that are available to developers and end-users. One really cool thing you can do with OpenAPIs is to "mock" or simulate the APIs just based on your API specification. This is really useful for API development but it can also come in handy for end users to be able to try out your APIs. Prism Mock by Stoplight is an OpenAPI mocking tool that was introduced to me by Jake Robinson.

Over the break, I finally found some time to play with this tool and I think this could be really useful for those wanting to get a taste of the various VMware Cloud APIs. As I have mentioned already, nothing beats the real APIs and there are some limitations with the mocking tool, so you should still consider using the real APIs when you are ready.

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RSS feed for VMware release notes

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Staying up to date with the latest VMware product releases can be a challenge and with something like VMware Cloud on AWS, which is delivered as a service, it can be even more tricky as new updates are constantly being made available. Historically, there has not been a consistent method for how customers can get notified of new releases and this has also come up from our VMware Cloud on AWS customers.

We posed the challenge to our Information Exchange (documentation) team to see how we can help our VMware Cloud on AWS customers and the team came back with an initial implementation of providing a standard RSS feed which you can now find at the upper right hand corner of the VMware Cloud on AWS release notes page. You can subscribe using your favorite RSS reader, I personally use Feedly and when a new release of the SDDC and/or service, you will get notified via your RSS reader. For those that want a different delivery mechanism such as email for example, you can use the free If This, Than That (IFTTT) service which I also personally use and setup an email notification or any other type of notification that IFTTT supports.


Although this initial requirement was driven by the VMware Cloud on AWS product team, we definitely wanted to see this capability delivered across all VMware products and services which is what the team has done as well. When you navigate to a specific product and/or service release notes, you will now see the additional RSS feed that you can subscribe to.

Here are just a few of the popular RSS feeds that I know folks will want to subscribe to. For a complete list of all VMware product/services, please take a look here.

I think this be a great first step in helping our customers easily get notified of new releases, so that can start reviewing the release notes and start planning. I know many of you have also asked for other methods such as programmatic access to release notes updates or even having a specific changelog for things like our APIs. If folks have any feedback in this area, feel free to leave a comment and I will be more than happy to share this with our documentation team.

Configuring Github Actions self-hosted runners on PhotonOS 

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Ever since Github announced Github Actions, which is now generally available for everyone, I have been a huge fan of the service. I even shared a blog post earlier this year on how you can easily incorporate automated application deployment to a vSphere or VMware Cloud on AWS based environment, which can automatically be triggered by native developer workflows directly from Github. This can be a really powerful and enabling capability for your developers, especially when taking advantage of an on-demand solution like VMware Cloud on AWS.
Right before VMworld Barcelona, I saw a tweet from the Github Twitter account announcing another cool feature which is the ability to run your own self-hosted runners. By default, when you use Github Actions, the runners are hosted by Github and when a Docker Container is launched, it is running within their infrastructure. During the beta, I had noticed some inconsistencies on how long it would take my Github Actions to kickoff which is usually within a minute or so but I have seen cases where it has gone up 5 to 10 minutes.

I was told that this was an infrastructure issue, but it did raise an interesting question in my mind on SLAs. As far as I know, nothing is publicly documented and Github also mentioned they did not have an SLA for the service. If you need a more predictable experience, you now have the option of running the "runners" in your own infrastructure which can be on-premises environment or even a public cloud where you have available compute capacity.

I finally got a chance to explore this capability and of course, I had to figure out how to get this working with our very own VMware PhotonOS. With a bit of trial and error, I was able to get everything working. In fact, I was able to run my Github runner directly in my VMware Cloud on AWS environment which can be quite useful for customers with development and CI/CD-based workloads and being able to leverage Github Actions.

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