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Automated Deployment of VCF Operations 9 OVA

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After receiving an email asking about automating the deployment of VCF Operations 9.0 using the OVA image, I remembered that I had previously written a blog post on this topic back in 2014. Revisiting that article, it was clear the content needed to be refreshed, especially the OVF properties used within the script.

Since I have a written (not using AI) numerous deployment scripts over the years, I was able to quickly adapt the VCF Operations 9.0 changes and also enhance it a bit further.

Here is both PowerShell (using PowerCLI) and Bash Script (using OVFTool) to automate the deployment of VCF Operations 9.0 OVA


In addition to deploying the VCF Operations OVA, it will power on the appliance and wait for the /admin URL endpoint to be ready before completing.

Note: Since the bash script uses OVFTool, there is a hidden OVF property that allows you to enable SSH if you need. This option is not available with the PowerShell script.

For additional VCF Operations configurations post-deployment, you can refer to the VCF Operations API.

Frequent Query container volume async Tasks in vSphere UI 

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If you are running vSphere workloads that leverage Cloud Native Storage (CNS), whether through upstream or third party Kubernetes, vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS), vSAN File Services, or VCF Automation (VCFA), you have likely noticed recurring "Query container volume async" tasks appearing in the vCenter Recent Tasks pane.


I have generally treated these as informational events and ignored them, but during a recent VCFA upgrade I had noticed an uptick in the frequency of these tasks and wanted to understand where they were coming from and whether I could reduce the frequency of these events.

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Quick Tip - Debugging "stuck" vSphere Supervisor being removed

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Disabling or deactivating vSphere Supervisor can take some time depending on the number of resources you may have deployed, which all need to be properly cleaned up.


In case the removal is taking longer than expected, there is not much information provided to the user in the vSphere UI.

However, I recently learned about a useful way to understand what is actually happening on the backend by looking at the vSphere Supervisor service logs, especially if you believe the operation is "stuck", which ended up being my situation.

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