In this blog I’ll walk through what is required to deploy an application in Avi, using ansible. Ansible is pretty flexible, and a great tool to start automating your network stack. There are a number of ways to use ansible to create an application in Avi: Software Versions used in this demo Software Version Bootstrap…
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) in your Home Lab
Updated with VCF 5.2 here I have struggled to find an end to end comprehensive guide on deploying VCF for home lab use. Generally I prefer blogs for this sort of thing, because a blog will tell me exactly how to get the application up and running, but not necessarily explain all the bells and…
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Deployment Timetable
Please see the VCF Deployment Blog first!!! This page is just to show the VCF deployment timetable. You can see each of the tasks and how long they took to execute in my environment. Compare this to your environment and look for anomalies if things are hanging. And feel free to leave me a comment…
Deploy nested ESXi VMs using a Kickstart (KS) script and Ansible Automation
I recently wrote a blog post where I spent some time trying to build out nested environments by cloning an esxi template directly in vSphere. This didn’t quite work out as expected for a number of reasons: mac address persisted to the clone, storage uuid persisted, and the overall system uuid seem to persist into…
Clone a Nested ESXi VM for Nested vSphere Lab Environments
Update. Don’t clone an esxi VM to create a nested environment. There is a better way! Use a kickstart script and install it directly from the ISO.When I originally started this blog post, I thought the best/only way to create a bunch of esxi vms for nesting, was to do it via cloning. I had…
Avi – Secure your application with the Avi Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Adding a WAF to your application can help protect against numerous threats including injections, cross-site scripting, ddos, etc. With Avi, the process to add the WAF protection is quite simple, and in this first blog post about the WAF, we’ll just demonstrate configuring the WAF on a virtual service.To learn more about what a WAF…
Avi – API Parameters and Filters
Avi’s platform is built on APIs. You can take a look at the official API guide here. It’s a pretty comprehensive list of all the APIs and the methods available, as well as some examples on how to use the API including authentication. Additionally, swagger is built into all the Avi controllers, so you can…
Avi – Advanced RBAC settings – Labels and Filters
In this guide, we’ll walk through some of the more advanced RBAC settings that can be applied to users and their roles. These additional settings can allow an Avi administrator to limit users with specific labels so they can only see applications they’re approved to see. The example we’ll use below is on the type…
Avi – Setup users and assign custom roles
In this tutorial I’ll demonstrate how easy it is to create new local users in Avi and apply custom RBAC settings to them.See the formal KB Software Versions used in this demo Software Version Avi Controller & Service Engines 22.1.5 Create Local Users in Avi With a new Avi install, navigate to Administration -> Accounts…
Upgrading to 10Gb links between the SuperMicros
Background Ok so I’ve had my home lab for a couple years at this point, and overall I’m impressed. I have had a ton of workloads on these things from vSphere, vSAN, vCenter, NSX-T, NSX ALB (Avi Networks), Tkgs (vCenter and Tanzu), and Tkgm (Standalone Tanzu). I’ve also installed various firewalls, and DNS tools like…