Blog Posts

Stupid Human, of course I'll fix it
May 21, 2026 · 16 min read · vcf-automation vcf fleet-management ai-written ·
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In my previous post, I wrote about how I fixed an out of space issue on my VCF Automation appliance. Like many things in infrastructure administration, this triggered a cascade of failure events. It never ceases to surprise me how often a flood of failures is held back only until you fix one problem and then …
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VCF Automation ran out of disk space? Fleet Manager's got you.
May 21, 2026 · 3 min read · vra vcf-automation postgres storage kubernetes ·
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My life is full of equally true statements:
- I have VCF Operations monitoring everything.
- I have VCF Operations sending me Slack notifications.
- Things go wrong in my lab all the time.
- I ignore the alarms and notifications.
- I wonder why things suddenly break just before a demo.
This post isn't here to help you learn …

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Claude Commissions a VCF Host
May 12, 2026 · 8 min read ·
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Like many others, I jumped on the MinisForum MS-A2 train a few months ago. I swapped out my Dell r740xd which was a single host management domain, with 3x MS-A2s. In general, these have been performing really well. When I put a host into maintenance mode, things can get a little slow, but I've been really happy with …
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ScarGuard: Vibecoding a Heron Deterrent That Actually Works
Apr 18, 2026 · 8 min read ·
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About a year ago, a great blue heron ate more than ten of my goldfish. I watched it happen - well, I watched the aftermath. One morning I walked out to the pond and the population had just... changed. Great blue herons are patient, methodical hunters. A single bird can empty a pond in a morning.
While a number of …

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Reset the VCF NSX svc Account
Jan 5, 2026 · 2 min read ·
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Last week, I ran into an issue in my lab when trying to commission additional hosts. After some digging, I realized that SDDC Manager was having trouble communicating with the NSX Manager for my management domain. In VCF Operations, my Fleet Management tasks were filled with messages indicating that the connection to …
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Aria Ops: Reporting from the API
Mar 7, 2025 · 3 min read ·
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Have you ever wished you could see your infrastructure’s performance data in more detail than the standard hourly reports? I did too. That’s why I built a simple PowerShell solution that leverages the Aria Ops API to pull metrics at 5-minute intervals - giving you access to a level of insight that out-of-the-box …
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Failed Aria Automation Upgrade Prep
Nov 5, 2024 · 2 min read ·
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I went to upgrade Aria Automation from 8.18 to 8.18.1 in my lab the other day and got blocked by an error I hadn't seen before and unfortunately, LCM and a KB search didn't provide much in the way of help. I decided to check and see what information the command line might have for me. After SSHing in and utilizing …
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Resolving a 403 Error in Aria Automation Config with vIDM Integration
Dec 14, 2023 · 2 min read ·
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The other day, I took a leap and activated the IDM integration for my Aria Automation Config instance, after months of punting it down the road and just logging in as root. Unfortunately, once I activated the integration I immediately got a 403 error once I tried to login!

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vRealize Automation fails to install Salt Minion
Mar 11, 2022 · 2 min read ·
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I was attempting to leverage the saltConfiguration property in a vRA Cloud Template and ran into an issue where vRA would deploy the VM and then fail with an error indicating that the Salt Minion deploy failed. I was particularly puzzled by this because the cloud template I was using had worked previously, so it was a …
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Tag Based Affinity Rules
Jun 15, 2021 · 6 min read ·
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vROPS has a feature called Business Intent, which allows us to control the placement of virtual machines through the use of vSphere tags. Business intent allows us to control the placement of machines on a cluster basis or a host basis, allowing you to optimize the performance and placement of vms in accordance with …
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