https://www.why-did-it.fail/tags/automation/Recent content in automation on Why did IT failHugo -- gohugo.ioenCopyright © 2026 Dominik Textoris (formerly Zorgnotti). All Rights Reserved.Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2022-05-how-to-query-hcl-api/Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2022-05-how-to-query-hcl-api/Yet again, customer questions make the best blog posts. This time, it’s about retrieving the firmware and drivers from an ESXi host. So far, the customer uses esxcli which required either PowerCLI or direct SSH access, both were not the preferred choices in this case. High-level overview Starting with vSphere 7, vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) can handle this task. This blog post will show you how to create a HCL report for a given host which contains all the required information about firmware and drivers, as well as the bonus information about the support status of the system and devices.https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2022-04-howto-attatch-clib-iso/Thu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2022-04-howto-attatch-clib-iso/A few days ago I was asked by a customer on how to attach an ISO file to a VM using RestAPI calls in the vCenter. Having never done this before I had a look at the problem today and want to share the steps with you. High-level overview Assuming you uploaded the ISO file to the content library prior to reading this, you need to obtain three information before you can attach an ISO file:https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2022-03-tce-demo-appliance/Tue, 05 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2022-03-tce-demo-appliance/TL,DR: GitHub Repo for TCE Demo appliance Motivation I was quite excited when VMware released Tanzu Community Edition. It is a free and open source distribution of VMware Tanzu, featuring Cluster-API and other amazing stuff. It was just what I needed to further expand my Kubernetes-fu and it is suitable sized for any home-lab. However, while TCE itself is easy enough to deploy, I had some challenges with the prerequisites for Docker and other components on my workstation(s).https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2021-03-tag-vcenter-object/Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2021-03-tag-vcenter-object/I am working on enhancing my vSphere release tagging script with the ability to tag the vCenter with a human-readable release name. As shown in the screenshot, it’s easy enough in the UI. Tags applied to the vCenter in the UI However, in PowerCLI there is no commandlet like get-vcenter. After many tries I gave up trying to force the object returned from $global:DefaultVIServers[0] to accept any tag-related operations. Today, I had the idea of working backwards from the assigned tags with Get-TagAssignmenthttps://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2021-02-set-esxi-release-names-with-tags/Fri, 05 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2021-02-set-esxi-release-names-with-tags/Update [2022-10-17] The VMware APIs for the KnowledgeBase have introduced a breaking change. This means the releases can no longer be updated without further development. Update [2021-03-09] The repository has been renamed to VMware-vSphere-Release-Tagging as the future scope should include the vCenter as well. Thank you for all the feedback! In this blog post I want to show you a practial application for the automation that I have built in my last project:https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2021-01-vmware-releases-python/Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2021-01-vmware-releases-python/Update [2022-10-17] The VMware APIs for the KnowledgeBase have introduced a breaking change. This means the releases can no longer be updated without further development. I started a project with the goal to re-format VMware product release information in a way that can be used in automation and scripting. These days, even Excel can handle JSON. When searching for new projects I often need some external trigger to take the first step.https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2020-05-automating-templates-part4/Tue, 04 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2020-05-automating-templates-part4/This is the fourth part in a multi-part series about the automation of VMware vSphere template builds. A template is a pre-installed virtual machine that acts as master image for cloning virtual machines from it. In this series I am describing how to get started on automating the process. As I am writing these blog post while working on the implementation some aspects may seem “rough around the edges”. Part 1: Overview/Motivation Part 2: Building a pipeline for a MVP Part 3: An overview of packer Part 4: Concourse elements and extending the pipeline The focus in this part are the concourse basics.https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2020-05-automating-templates-part3/Thu, 23 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2020-05-automating-templates-part3/This is the third part in a multi-part series about the automation of VMware vSphere template builds. A template is a pre-installed virtual machine that acts as master image for cloning virtual machines from it. In this series I am describing how to get started on automating the process. As I am writing these blog post while working on the implementation some aspects may seem “rough around the edges”. Part 1: Overview/Motivation Part 2: Building a pipeline for a MVP Part 3: An overview of packer Part 4: Concourse elements and extending the pipeline If all went well, part 2 left you with a functional Ubuntu template.https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2020-05-automating-templates-part2/Tue, 21 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2020-05-automating-templates-part2/This is the second part in a multi-part series about the automation of VMware vSphere template builds. A template is a pre-installed virtual machine that acts as master image for cloning virtual machines from it. In this series I am describing how to get started on automating the process. As I am writing these blog post while working on the implementation some aspects may seem “rough around the edges”. Part 1: Overview/Motivation Part 2: Building a pipeline for a MVP Part 3: An overview of packer Part 4: Concourse elements and extending the pipeline This part will focus on getting you started with a minimum viable product by building a single Ubuntu 18.https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2020-05-automating-templates-part1/Sun, 19 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.why-did-it.fail/blog/2020-05-automating-templates-part1/This is a multi-part series about the automation of VMware vSphere template builds. A template is a pre-installed virtual machine that acts as master image for cloning virtual machines from it. In this series I am describing how to get started on automating the process. As I am writing these blog post while working on the implementation some aspects may seem “rough around the edges”. Part 1: Overview/Motivation Part 2: Building a pipeline for a MVP Part 3: An overview of packer Part 4: Concourse elements and extending the pipeline If you want to know more about the topic here is an awesome blog series about automated template management from Eric Lee - many thanks to Timo Sugliani for the recommendation.