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Is vSphere with Kubernetes available for evaluation? 

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Yes. Given the frequency that this question has come up, I thought it would be useful to share some more details on how you can start playing with the new vSphere with Kubernetes (K8s) capability which was introduced as part of the vSphere 7.0 release. vSphere w/K8s requires NSX-T and although vSphere (ESXi and vCenter Server Appliance) has supported a 60 day evaluation period, NSX-T historically did not support any self-service evaluation. In addition, there were also some confusion in how vSphere w/K8s was bundled today from a packaging standpoint which is offered as part of the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.0 SKU.

Putting aside the pricing and packaging aspects, customers can indeed evaluate vSphere w/K8s using one of the following two options below:

Option 1: 60 Day Eval

Sign up for the vSphere 7.0 (ESXi & VCSA) evaluation (https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=vsphere-eval-7) and NSX-T 3.0 evaluation (https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=nsx-t-eval). After signing up you will receive evaluation keys that can be used when setting up vSphere w/K8s. If you want to quickly go from 0 to Kubernetes, be sure to check out my vSphere with K8s Automation Lab Deployment which can give you a running environment in under 30min!

Option 2: 365 Day Eval

Sign up for VMUG Advantage which includes VMUGEval that provides licenses for vSphere 7.0, NSX-T 3.0, VCF 4.0 and many other VMware products for an entire year for non-production usage. After signing up you will receive license keys that will be valid for 1 year which can then be used when setting up vSphere w/K8s. With VMUG Advantage, you can consume vSphere w/K8s the "manual" method, using my vSphere with K8s Automation Lab Deployment or using SDDC Manager which is part of VCF 4.0 to automatically deployed the required SDDC infrastructure so that can then enable vSphere w/K8s.

Here is a screenshot of my vSphere w/K8s environment which was deployed using my Sphere with K8s Automation Lab Deployment script and using the evaluation keys which I had just signed up!

Option 3: Infinite Day Eval

VMware Hands-on-Lab is another great option which is completely free and you only need a web browser! You can check out HOL-2113-01-SDC for more details.

Quick Tip - Encoding emojis in a Microsoft Teams message using O365 API

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One easy way to integrate with Microsoft Teams is to use an incoming webhook which can be configured on a per-channel basis. While working on creating some new PowerShell functions for the VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA), I was stuck trying to figure out how to properly encode an emoji icon into the MessageCard type for sending a message to a teams channel.

After a bit of searching and some trial/error, I finally found that you needed to use the emoji hex code with the following format:

&#x<EMOJI-HEX-CODE>;

I used this site here to find the emoji to hex code translation. In addition, I also found that the emojis will only render when used in either the activityTitle or text property of the MessageCard. I was initially trying use this within the facts property which does not work.

Here is a working PowerShell example on constructing the the MessageCard JSON which utilizes emojis:

$teamsMessage = [PSCustomObject][Ordered]@{
    "@type"      = "MessageCard"
    "@context"   = "http://schema.org/extensions"
    "themeColor" = '0078D7'
    "summary"      = "VMC SDDC Deleted"
    "sections"   = @(
        @{
            "activityTitle" = "&#x1F6A8; **VMC SDDC Deleted** &#x1F6A8;";
            "activitySubtitle" = "In VMC-Customer[0] Organization";
            "activityImage" = "https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/files/2019/07/Icon-2019-VMWonAWS-Primary-354-x-256.png"
            "facts" = @(
                @{
                    "name" = "SDDC:";
                    "value" = "M11-SDDC";
                },
                @{
                    "name" = "Date:";
                    "value" = "2020-07-12T11:20:03.364000Z";
                },
                @{
                    "name" = "User:";
                    "value" = "*protected email*";
                }
            );
            "markdown" = $true;
            "text" = "&#x1F629; This is the text field &#x1F629;";
        }
    )
}

$body = $teamsMessage | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 5
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $teamsWebhookURL  -Method POST -ContentType "application/json" -Body $body | Out-Null

Here is what the rendered Microsoft Teams message will looks like posting to the webhook:

Custom notification and automation based on host failure in VMware Cloud on AWS

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Physical hardware failure is inevitable, this is true whether it is running in your on-premises datacenter or in the Cloud like VMware Cloud on AWS. Although vSphere HA will automatically restart all affected VMs after detecting a host failure, there is usually additional activities that must be performed by a customer such as notifying all impacted application owners and even creating an incident ticket for hardware replacement.

With VMware Cloud on AWS, the hardware replacement is done automatically for you but the downstream activity of notifying application owners to verify the application is functional is still managed by the customer. There are many ways in how customers can manage such incidents and one solution that I am a huge advocate of is taking advantage of the powerful vCenter Server Events, which has over 1700+ events, not to mention any of the 2nd/3rd party events.

When an ESXi host fails, the com.vmware.vc.HA.DasHostFailedEvent event will be generated which contains all the relavent information related to the host failure including the specific hostname/IP, when the incident occurred and details about the vSphere Cluster and Datacenter is also provided. This information is visible using the vSphere UI but it can also be programmatically retrieved using the vSphere API, which is how the vSphere UI renders this information.

Note: Everything described in this blog post including the VEBA example is applicable to any environment that contains vCenter Server and is not limited to just VMware Cloud on AWS.

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