I use Text To Speech (TTS) pretty regularly on MacOS to read content to me with a simply key combination. Up until recently, that was the extent of my interest or need in it. My wife was interested in creating short english lesson videos in a cartoon format, but neither of us wanted to act out the character voices. Enter TTS. This took place in the beginning of September so we started looking around for a nice Text To Speech solution.

In my efforts to learn more in the Cloud Native Apps space, I recently attended DockerCon 2018 and have been playing around with Docker a bit so I get the basics. Since VMware has Pivotal Container Services (PKS) for self-hosted enterprise ready Kubernetes and VMware Kubernetes Engine (VKE) as an upcoming SaaS offering, I figured it was time to start getting a feel for Kubernetes. Docker Training For the first two days of DockerCon, I opted for the Docker Fundamentals training as an add-on.

A power outage recently made a mess of my home lab due to a resulting issue with VSAN. As a result, I needed to setup a fresh Virtual Center Server Appliance (VCSA), but my DNS server was on the VSAN! vCenter now requires working DNS resolution during install… What to do?? Well, I’ve recently been getting started with Docker so figured this would be a good opportunity to use that to address an immediate need that I, and potentially others, would need: A quick and easy lightweight DNS server that could be used for resolving my lab domain.

Last week, I was leading discussions at a Technical session for VMware's internal TechSummit event in Toronto, Canada. During one of the discussions, we ended up on the topic of where and how we were storing workflows and packages we had developed. I was a bit surprised that people in the room had workflows and packages in GitHubreposbut weren't aware of some aspects of the Sample Exchange at the VMware Code site!

On the VMware blog I have explained how vRealize Automation Anything as a Service (XaaS) work with Orchestrator and how a vRO plug-in works. In this tutorial I will walk you through how I managed to implement Microsoft DNS as a service I used for the screenshot examples on that blog including: The Microsoft DNS dynamic types plug-in DNS record as a service in vRA DNS record as a blueprint component This is the first public tutorial on how to create a Dynamic Types plug-in from scratch and the overall methodology used applies to other integrations.

In a previous article, I taught you How to retrieve a script Resource from vRO via curl. That can be helpful to some people, but how about updating that script? Easy! Read on… This is a super short post since all the tough details were already outlined in the article linked above. So, assuming you already know the ID and name of the script you wish to update, all you need to do is run the following curl command:

I recently spent time with a customer doing a vRO workshop with them. During the course of the workshop, I was asked how you could retrieve a script that had been stored as a resource element on a vRO server using curl. Well, I had never done that before so I set out to figure it out and was able to provide the solution before I left! Throughout this article, I will be using a vRA 7.

In a previous article VMworld 2016 Barcelona Hackathon, I noted that I had won an i3 NUC at VMworld in Barcelona. After playing with that for a few days and helping Alan Renouf test his Home Lab Deployment Script, I decided I wanted to have a full 3 node cluster - but with the i5 Processor … so, I went shopping! Gear Intel NUC i5 Model: Intel NUC i5: NUC6i5SYH

I recently came across a thread asking about how to disable Storage I/O Statistics Collection using PowerCLI. The thread referenced this article by Michael Webster: Disable SIOC IO Metrics Collection For Auto Tiering Storage Systems. In one of the comments, someone asked about using PowerCLI.. Unfortunately there was no answer there so I thought - I might be able to figure this out! With regards to checking that box, I can’t say whether it’s a good idea or not, my purpose here was just to illustrate how to do it via PowerCLI and vRO.

The Intel NUC has become a popular device for a variety of use cases. It’s quite a powerful little box that can be used as a regular Windows/Linux machine, a Home Theater PC (HTPC), or a techie Test/Dev box for many different types of software, including VMware ESXi - and even vSAN! This will be a short blog post on setting up a USB boot stick for the installation of ESXi on a SanDisk Ultra Fit 16GB USB.