• 6 Months of Enjoying Running

    Been running a bit, now writting about it

    A bit over 12 months ago, I signed up for the Melbourne Run for the Kids charity run. The original goal to was use the looming 15KM race as motivation to improve my aerobic fitness. While I did the race, I disliked pretty much everything about running. It was long... more

  • Intro to UCSMSDK

    First look at the Python SDK for USC Manager

    Cisco UCSMSDK Intro UCSMSDK is a Python SDK from Cisco for the configuration of UCS managers. The modules are supports in both Python 2 and 3, my testing has been with Python 3.6 and everything has been going well. GitHub Repo Why Use UCSMSDK Cisco has a number of CLI... more

  • VCAP7-CMA Objective 2.2

    Map Service Dependencies

    Mapping service dependencies highlights internal and external communication requirements as well as improves the ability to troubleshoot effectively. In some cases, dependant services are explicitly stated. If this is not the case pre-deployment steps can provide this information. Upstream and Downstream Dependencies Applications are composed of a number of services.... more

  • Run for the Kids 2018

    On the 18th of March, VMware staff members from the Melbourne office will be taking part in the Run for the Kids charity race. By particiapting in the either the 5 or 15 KM events, we will be raising much needed funds for the Good Friday Appeal. The Good Friday... more

  • VCAP7-CMA Objective 4.1

    Determine Use Cases for Multi-Tenancy

    When designing a vRA solution, a common question is “Does this use case fit business groups or multi-tenancy?”. The key to answering this question is to determining what level of isolation entities require. Business groups provide some level of separation; resources and entitlements. But there are times where tenant level... more

  • VCAP7-CMA Objective 2.1

    Map Business Requirements to the Logical Design

    With your conceptual design accepted, you now need to create a logical design. This will create a map between requirements and components / services. The CMA exam covers products with many configuraiton options. To help with clarity, this page will provide more generic information on the objective. I am currently... more

  • VCAP7-CMA Objective 1.3

    Differentiate requirements, risks, constraints and assumptions

    During design workshops, we gather not only requirements, but also constraints which limit our choices. After inital workshops, we should building our design. Initially during this process we will need to make a number of assumptions and uncover potential risks. Assumptions need to be validated and risks raised throughout the... more

  • VCAP7-CMA Objective 1.2

    Gather and analyze use cases

    When first reading the title of this objective it can seem a bit hard to view how it will be on the exam. After input from others, it appears that the key is analyze a given use case. A Brief on Use Cases The purpose of a use case is... more

  • VCAP7 CMA Study Guide Use Case

    As part of the VCAP7-CMA Design study guide, I have put together a use case which will be used to provide context when addressing each of the exam objectives. The study guide can be found Here Use Case Mega-Awesome Transit have identified a need to increase the reliability and reduce... more

  • VCAP7-CMA Objective 1.1

    Gather and analyze business requirements

    Holding workshops with business stakeholders is the primary method of gathering business requirements. The goal of requirement gathering is to understand what the business is trying to acheive. Requirement workshops may also provide the constraints which we must work within. As a consultant conducting design workshops, it is important to... more

  • VMware Workstation 14 Linux Not Enough Memory

    I recently updated my Ubuntu install from 17.04 to 17.10, which meant the kernel was updated to 4.13. As a result, I was no longer able to run VMs with VMware Workstation. I found some posts regarding the error and that it was due to a change in the way... more

  • PowerCLI: Offline install PowerShell v3 and v4

    Today I came across the need to use PowerCLI on a computer without internet access. Thankfully I found this blog post detailing the steps that I needed to perform, however not all was rainbows and unicorns. I quickly ran aground when attempting to import the modules. After a bit of research,... more

  • Chef: vRA – Assigning Node Environment Using Custom Properties

    vRA uses Custom properties to help define parameters and the behaviour of requests. In the previous post CHEF: vRA Integration, Property Groups and Blueprints we used custom properties to define the properties of our Chef deployment. In this post, we look at using custom properties to assign the node environment. The Chef... more

  • CHEF: vRA Integration, Property Groups and Blueprints

    The Chef plugin provides some workflows to help with getting the vRA integration up and running with minimal effort. I would suggest treating them as samples to build functionality on top of. There are some limitations from the default state which might not provide sufficient flexibility for production usage. Setting up... more

  • CHEF: Integration with vRA, Client installation workflows

    Chef Integration with vRA: Part1 In the previous Chef integration with vRA post, we covered how to install the Chef plugin for vRO. In this post, we will look at provided workflows used to install the Chef Client on Windows and Linux VMs. The workflows are called by the Event... more