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How to setup private GitLab on a Synology for Project Keswick?

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My recent blog post on setting up a custom vSphere Content Library on my Synology gave me another idea that I had been thinking about regarding Project Keswick, which was announced back at VMware Explore Las Vegas.

If you have network connectivity to the Keswick Cloud Service, you can easily associate a Git repository, which is used for host configurations and workload deployments using GitOps using Github or even a privately managed Gitlab instance. For organizations that have additional compliance, security or air-gapped requirements, using the Keswick Cloud Service may not be an option. With that said, Project Keswick also supports an advanced deployment option where the association of a Git repository, such as GitLab, can also be accomplished without requiring the use of the Keswick Cloud Service.

While I have had experience using both Github as well as GitLab, which VMware uses to host its own code repository, I have actually never setup my own GitLab instance before. I thought this would be a great learning opportunity, especially with the ability to run additional add-on applications on a Synology.

After a bit of researching online, I found that GitLab can easily run as a Container workload and it just so happens that the Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) has a package for running containers creatively called Container Manager and below are the step by step instructions for setting up GitLab running on Synology DSM 7.2.

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ESXi on SimplyNUC Moonstone

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SimplyNUC has been a long time partner/reseller of the popular Intel NUC platform for quite some time but over the past few years, they have expanded their portfolio to include additional 4x4 systems that are completely designed in-house by SimplyNUC include Topaz, Ruby, Cypress and Chapel Rock to just name a few.


Moonstone is the latest 4x4 addition from SimplyNUC, which is an AMD-based kit that includes support for the latest AMD Zen 4 (Phoenix) and Zen 3+ (Rembrandt R) processors. The VMware Community has always been interested in an AMD-based kit but typically they do not work well due to the presence of a Realtek-based network adaptor, where drivers from Realtek does not exists for ESXi.

The first thing that caught my attention when I first heard about Moonstone was that this was an AMD kit that features an Intel-based network adapter as its primary network interface! 😲

This definitely took me by surprise, not sure if AMD was making any statements about their networking choices or simply diversifying their networking options? 🤔 Either way, I was not complaining and I thought this might be the first real viable AMD 4x4 candidate, from a VMware perspective, in quite some time.


Thanks to the SimplyNUC team, I did not have to wonder much more and I got the opportunity to put the Moonstone through its paces and see what it can do for the VMware Community!

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Easily disable vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) using UI/API in vSphere 8.0 Update 2

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As shared on Twitter/X yesterday, I just learned that we have made it much easier to disable (as well as enable) the vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) using the vSphere UI and API in the upcoming vSphere 8.0 Update 2 release. vCLS is enabled by default when a new vSphere Cluster is created and is required for vSphere DRS functionality but there may be scenarios where you are not using vSphere DRS or if you need to perform some clean up, one easy way is to simply disable and re-enable the vCLS service

The current method today for disabling vCLS is by putting a vSphere Cluster into what is called Retreat Mode, which involves adding a new vCenter Server Advanced Setting that contains the Managed Object Reference (MoRef ID) of the vSphere Cluster that you wish to disable vCLS on. If that sounds a bit complicated, it certainly can be and this needs to be done for each and every vSphere Cluster that you wish to disable vCLS, which can add an additional operational overhead.

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