WilliamLam.com

How to download offline copy of the Tanzu Kubernetes releases (TKr) Content Library?

by // 2 Comments

As part of the setup for vSphere with Tanzu, a local vSphere Content Library needs be created to store the various Tanzu Kubernetes releases (TKr) which users typically synchronize from VMware's online TKr Content Library repository.


I typically recommend configuring the content library subscription to only download files when needed, rather than the entire library, which is currently over 200GB+.

After standing up another vSphere with Tanzu environment, I needed to download additional TKr images but I could not reuse my existing subscribed content library since it was configured on a different vCenter Server.

With the ability to host a custom vSphere Content Library on my Synology, I realized a better solution would be for me to simply download the full VMware TKr Content Library and host that locally on my network rather than re-downloading the same images each time I have a new deployment.

[Read more...]

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

by // 3 Comments

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.

[Read more...]

How to setup custom vSphere Content Library on a Synology?

by // 3 Comments

The ability to run a diverse set of custom add-on applications from backup, security, multimedia, developer tools and many more directly on a Synology NAS makes it extremely versatile and can enable a number of new capabilities within your environment.


While browsing through the packages, I noticed there is a WebStation package which can be used to host a basic website (can also support advanced web applications). This immediately gave me an idea as I can now host my own custom vSphere Content Library, also referred to as a 3rd party content library that are managed outside of vCenter Server, directly on the Synology!

Note: Installing add-on applications will consume additional CPU and memory resources on your Synology, make sure you have enough resources, especially memory before running additional services on your Synology.

[Read more...]