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PowerShell community module for Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu

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In the previous blog post, we explored the Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu REST API and how it can be used for automation and more advanced workflows. To simplify the consumption of the App Transformer REST API and how I started to explore and learn about the APIs, I created a PowerShell module for App Transformer that implements a number of the App Transformer REST API that can easily be consumed using the following functions:

  • Connect-AppTransformer
  • Get-AppTransformerApplication
  • Get-AppTransformerComponent
  • Get-AppTransformerComponentSignature
  • Get-AppTransformerCredential
  • Get-AppTransformerNetworkInsight
  • Get-AppTransformerVCenter
  • Get-AppTransformerVM
  • New-AppTransformerCredential
  • New-AppTransformerCredentialAssociation
  • New-AppTransformerNetworkInsightCloud
  • New-AppTransformerVCenter
  • Remove-AppTransformerCredential
  • Start-AppTransformerIntrospection


🥳 To help celebrate the official GA of Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu today, I have just published my PowerShell Community Module for App Transformer into the PowerShell Gallery!

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Getting Started with the Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu REST API

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An extremely powerful capability of Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu is not just getting application data and custom information into App Transformer, but that you can also easily extract that information and use that for a number of other scenarios including but not limited to internal true up of your deployed applications versus what is currently in your Change Management Database (CMDB), inventory analysis across your application vendor and/or versions for auditing, licensing and compliance to identifying vulnerable software versions. The use cases for App Transformer certainly span beyond just App Modernization and can truly be endless!


The App Transformer UI is just one way in which users can interact with the solution but for more advanced workflows or automation purposes, users can also leverage the App Transformer REST API. In this blog post, we take a look at how to get started with the App Transformer REST API.

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How to create a customized ESXi ISO without vCenter Server?

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Historically, if you needed to create a customized ESXi ISO that included additional ESXi drivers, your only supported option was to use the vSphere Image Builder service, which has a dependency on vCenter Server. If you have an existing vCenter Server, this was not a problem and you could easily create a customized ESXi ISO using either the vSphere UI (example here) or the CLI with PowerCLI (example here).

Where this becomes a real challenge is for a greenfield or brand new deployment, where the default ESXi ISO can not be used as it does not contain the required networking and/or storage drivers for the desired hardware platform. Although this affects some customers who use hardware from the VMware HCL but it definitely has a bigger impact on the VMware Homelab community or anyone just getting started for the very first time.

While discussing this topic with a colleague recently, I actually came to learn about an alternative solution for creating a customized ESXi ISO without the need of vCenter Server! Thanks to fellow team member Blair Fritz, who now works in the VMware Cloud Product Management team, for the awesome tip.

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