Monthly Archives: September 2020

Planning the Hardware Requirements for the VMware Cloud Foundation Management Domain, Part 2: Cloud Operations and Automation

In Part 1, we built the hardware build of materials and determined the utilization of a basic VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) management domain deployment. But we need to put the “cloud” in by adding automation and self-service capabilities provided by vRealize Suite. To accomplish that, we can use SDDC Manager to deploy all the components of the vRealize Suite: Operations, Automation, and Log Insight into the SDDC. In this post, we’ll explore the compute and storage requirements for these components like we did in the previous post. This is going to explore the components required for a single region SDDC. There are a few more steps and components needed for setting up Cross-Region support.

Planning the Hardware Requirements for the VMware Cloud Foundation Management Domain

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When talking with customers about deploying a standard VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) architecture, the topic of the hardware requirements and details for the management domain are usually glossed over. There’s a basic understanding that it will consist of 4 hosts with sufficient resources to run the SDDC components for the workload domains that it manages. When it comes time for purchasing though, what is the actual hardware that will run the management domain and does VMware have recommended specs for hardware for the management domain?

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Backup and Restore etcd in Kubernetes Cluster for CKA v1.19

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The final module of the Cluster Architecture, Installation, and Configuration is Implement etcd backup and restore. Let’s quickly perform the actions we need to complete this step for the exam.

Perform a Backup of etcd

While it’s still early and details of the CKA v1.19 environment aren’t known yet, I’m anticipating a small change to how etcd backup and restore is performed. If you’ve been preparing for the CKA before the September 2020 change to Kubernetes v1.19, you may know be familiar with the environment variable export ETCDCTL_API=3 to ensure you’re using version 3 of etcd’s API, which has the backup and restore capability. However, Kubernetes v1.19 ships with etcd 3.4.9 and in etcd 3.4.x, the default API version is 3 so this process is no longer necessary! If etcdctl version returns a version lower than 3.4.x, you will still need to set the API version to 3 for performing backup and restore operations.

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How to Integrate Amazon Smart Plug with Home Assistant

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Amazon Smart Plugs are an excellent addition to automate your home with Alexa. However, if you’re an advanced home automation user using a more robust solution like Home Assistant, you will find their limited usage to the Alexa app very frustrating!

I discovered a solution to get Amazon Smart Plugs accessible in Home Assistant using input booleans and template binary sensors. By pairing a binary sensor from Home Assistant with an Amazon Smart Plug inside of an Alexa Routine, we’re able to control the smart plug from Home Assistant!