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Retrieving the vSAN Cluster Shutdown VMs running Pre-Check Results using PowerCLI

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The vSAN Cluster Shutdown capability has been around since vSAN 7 Update 3 and has been enhanced over the years, most recently with the introduction of a vSAN Cluster Shutdown Wizard as part of the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 release.


For those looking to automate the shutdown of their vSAN Cluster, we have a number of PowerCLI cmdlets: Get-VsanClusterPowerState, Start-VsanCluster and Stop-VsanCluster that simplifies this process in addition to the new UI interface, all leveraging the vSAN Management APIs.

Before the vSAN Cluster can initiate the shutdown workflow, it needs to make sure all VMs (excluding the vCenter Server VM that is managing the vSAN Cluster) has been powered off. For large environments, it can take some time to power off all VMs, which means you might need to poll or wait before running the Stop-VsanCluster cmdlet.

Instead of having to write additional code to wait for all your VMs to shutdown, you can leverage one of the vSAN Health Check Perspectives that will conveniently let you know when the vSAN Cluster is ready to be shutdown.

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JFrog Artifactory as VCF Software Depot for VCF Installer & SDDC Manager

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JFog Artifactory is widely used by enterprises as a centralized software repository for managing packages, dependencies, and build artifacts. Recently, we have had several customers asking whether Artifactory can be used as a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Software Depot for both the VCF Installer and SDDC Manager?

Any software repository solution should work as long as the VCF software binaries and metadata can be accessed by either the VCF Installer or SDDC Manager over HTTP(S) with basic authentication. While I have been a consumer of Artifactory before, I have actually never set it up before and this was a good learning opportunity!

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Identifying VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) managed service accounts in vCenter Server

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When users log in to a vCenter Server to manage roles and permissions within a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 environment, they may notice several accounts that already have vSphere permissions assigned.


This might come as a surprise, especially if you do not recall creating these users, let alone granting them privileges within vCenter Server.

A large majority of the user accounts that you see are internal to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) and represents the different application services running within the VCSA. There are also a handful of VCF accounts that are automatically created to enable communication between the various VCF components, but at the end of the day these are all service accounts that is either managed by vCenter Server or VCF.

With that said, it might be useful to understand which of these accounts are service accounts, so organizations can properly audit their environment for compliance and configuration management.

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