Author Archives: chrisfwilliams

The Mistwire HomeLab setup!

By | August 8, 2016

Hi All! So this post has been a long time coming and I’ve spent the last week banging away at my environment to get it up to spec. I’m going to approach this article like I would a standard design engagement: list my requirements, risks, assumptions & constraints create a conceptual, logical and physical design… Read More »

AWS – Monitoring the Memory of your Virtual Machine (AMI)

By | July 10, 2016

Out of the box, CloudWatch by default monitors 4 things: CPU Network Disk Status Checks Can you tell which resource CloudWatch doesn’t monitor out of the box? Memory! (update:  According to AWS technical support “Right now, you do not need to deploy anything in you AMI to monitor your instance. Metrics like memory utilization and… Read More »

Category: AWS

vROps – Setting up alerting for vROps Cluster & vCenter metrics collecting

By | June 29, 2016

When you set up a new vROps environment 2 things that you are going to want to monitor are (1) the health of the vROps nodes themselves and (2) the collection status from the vCenters that you are collecting data from. These are the steps you’ll want to perform once you’ve got your outbound notifications… Read More »

AWS – how to create a custom VPC with public & private subnets

By | June 15, 2016

One of the good training exercises that you can do while studying for the AWS-ASA is create from scratch an Internet accessible VPC without using one of the pre-built templates. This gives you the insight into how all of the underlying pieces fit together. That way when you are troubleshooting an existing deployment you can… Read More »

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Study Notes

By | February 15, 2018

I’m currently studying to sit the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification. To do this I’m (a) going through the exam blueprint, (b) writing blogs on my AWS free-tier lab, (c) watching the excellent http://acloud.guru videos. I bought the “Associate Bundle” so I plan on taking all 3 associate level courses eventually. I’ve decided to consolidate… Read More »

AWS create billing alerts so that our free* account doesn’t surprise us

By | May 15, 2016

Now that I’ve been playing around a bit in the environment, I decided to create some alerts in case I accidentally (or on purpose) chose an option that will incur charges to my credit card. Here are the steps to set up an email alert for your AWS account. Before you create a billing alarm,… Read More »

How to get your free* AWS account & spin up your first VM

By | May 6, 2016

I’m currently playing around with AWS. I’m watching the really good Pluralsight video series from Elias Khnaser on it. In it he walks you through the process of signing up for the free account (asterisks on free because depending on what you choose you CAN get charged and sometimes it’s not clear what the free… Read More »

vRealize Log Insight – Upgrade from 2.5 to 3.0.0

By | February 21, 2016

Download the 3.0.0 upgrade PAK file: Take a snapshot of your vLogInsight appliance 😉 Log in using admin credentials In the upper right hand corner, click on the 3 horizontal bars and choose “Administration”: In the left column click on “Appliance”: And now we wait: Eventually you will get kicked back to the log in… Read More »

vROps – How to share a custom dashboard

By | July 27, 2016

You’ve customized your first dashboard. It’s looking great and now you want to share it out, but how? It’s not as intuitive as you’d think… hence this post J Log in with admin rights Go to Administration -> Dashboards: Click on the dashboard you want to share: Click the down arrow next to the cog… Read More »

vROps – Upgrading vRealize Operations Manager from 6.1 to 6.2

By | November 26, 2016

The *day* that I finally got vROps upgraded from 6.0.2 to 6.1 was the exact same day that the 6.2 upgrade came out! VMware has assured me that the process for going from 6.1 to 6.2 will be less painful… Let’s find out! Download the 2 PAK files from VMware: Log into admin portal for… Read More »