virtuallyGhetto

Uncategorized

Alan Renouf, and his family, need your help. Please support/donate!

by 4 Comments

In case you have not heard, the Bay Area has recently been affected by a number of unprecedented wildfires which has destroyed several hundred thousands acres of land and is no where near containment. Thousands of families have been affected and this week, we found out our good friend Alan Renouf was also impacted and sadly lost his home in the fires.

Luckily, Alan and his family is safe, but as you can see from the devastation below (yes, this was actually his house on the left), it will take a long time to rebuild if that is even possible.


I know many of you know Alan for his work in PowerCLI, vSphere Automation and more recently his efforts in the VMware Office of CTO for Project VXR focused on Virtual and Augmented Reality. Like many, I have also benefited from Alan's work and if you feel the same way and would like to help him and his family out, please consider donating to the GoFundme page below. Like many of the affected families, they are currently staying in a hotel which is being paid out of their own pockets and any amount will go a long way! Please consider sharing this with others in your community that may be able to help and thank you for your help.

Direct GoFundMe URL: https://www.gofundme.com/f/renouf-fire-relief-fund

Quick Tip – Encoding emojis in a Microsoft Teams message using O365 API

by Leave a Comment

One easy way to integrate with Microsoft Teams is to use an incoming webhook which can be configured on a per-channel basis. While working on creating some new PowerShell functions for the VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA), I was stuck trying to figure out how to properly encode an emoji icon into the MessageCard type for sending a message to a teams channel.

After a bit of searching and some trial/error, I finally found that you needed to use the emoji hex code with the following format:

&#x<EMOJI-HEX-CODE>;

I used this site here to find the emoji to hex code translation. In addition, I also found that the emojis will only render when used in either the activityTitle or text property of the MessageCard. I was initially trying use this within the facts property which does not work.

Here is a working PowerShell example on constructing the the MessageCard JSON which utilizes emojis:

Here is what the rendered Microsoft Teams message will looks like posting to the webhook:

Dual Intel M.2 Optane 4801x in Supermicro E300-9D

by 10 Comments

For those that have been following along, I have been testing the Supermicro E300-9D (SYS-E300-9D-8CN8TP) kit in my home lab which I have written about here. One of the last things I was looking into was storage expandability with this platform, especially since Supermicro has a PCIe Add-On Card (AOC-SLG3-2M2) which can add two additional M.2 devices supporting 2260 (60mm), 2280 (80mm) & 22110 (110mm) form factors.

At the same time, our friends over at Intel had just given me access to a couple of their pre-release Intel M.2 Optane 4801x devices which were then released right before the holiday last year. For those wondering why Optane is so interesting, especially from a vSAN perspective, check out this blog post here from my good buddy Pete Flecha over in our Storage and Availability Business Unit (SABU).


This was actually perfect timing as I was also interested to see if there were any high performance and supported M.2 devices that could be used for for vSAN Caching and this device would definitely fit the bill! When I had initially received all the components, I was scratching my head as the AOC was too big to fit horizontally in the E300-9D.

[Read more...] about Dual Intel M.2 Optane 4801x in Supermicro E300-9D

1,000th post – The story behind virtuallyGhetto

by 9 Comments


After publishing my previous article, I realized my next blog post (this article) would be number 1,000, which is pretty insane! It has been an amazing 8 years of sharing and engaging with the VMware community and I just want to thank everyone that has supported me over the years.

Although I have a number of technical blog posts in the backlog, I thought I might do something fun and different for post #1,000. One question that I have gotten over the years, especially when talking to customers and partners in-person is, what is the story behind the name of my blog, virtuallyGhetto? I sometimes even get funny looks as customers are introducing me to their colleagues and management team when they mention the name of my blog 🙂

[Read more...] about 1,000th post – The story behind virtuallyGhetto

Thank you for voting! (Top vBlog 2017)

by 6 Comments

I had been in meetings all day today and I had noticed my Twitter notifications was going nuts. It was only until my last meeting of the day, which was with Emad, did I learn what was going on. I had no idea the Top vBlog 2017 results were being announced today and when Emad broke the news that I had gotten #1 this year, I was left speechless. I want to thank everyone who voted for me, this recognition truly means a lot coming from the community, so thank you! I also want to congratulate all my fellow bloggers who were also recognized in this years Top vBlog including the special category winners.


Lastly, a huge shoutout to Eric Siebert for running the Top vBlog program and spending countless hours putting everything together, we know its not easy each year and the community really appreciates it. Of course, I could not leave out Eric Wright and Turbonomic who were the sponsors again for this years Top vBlog. Thanks for guys!

If you missed the live-stream earlier (like me), you can watch the full results below. I believe Eric will also be publishing the complete Top vBlog results on his blog soon, so stay tuned for that!

VMware Validated Design (VVD) & VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Quick References

by 2 Comments

The other day, I had a customer ask about the latest version of the Ports and Protocols document that was put together by the VMware Validated Design (VVD) team which does a fantastic job of outlining all the connectivity between the products used within the VVD SDDC. It actually took me awhile to find after realizing it was posted on the VMTN Community rather than the official documentation page.

I also came across other VVD content that I thought would also be useful for customers and decided to create a VVD "Quick Reference" that organizes all of this content into a single place. In addition, I also created a nice short URL to the quick reference so you only have to remember that. After sharing this on Twitter yesterday, Ryan Johnson (TMM for VVD/VCF) got inspired and also created VMware Cloud Foundation Quick Reference which I also built a short URL for. If there is other content that you would like to see, feel free to drop me or Ryan a comment or better yet, submit a pull request on the Github page!

To access the Quick References, use the following short URLs:

Below is a quick screenshot of both the VVD and VCF Quick References: