Bits, Bytes, & Radio Waves

A Journey Through Discovery

  • Ports, Protocols, and Services (PPS)

    Introduction This is my attempt to keep track of various ports, protocols, and services for successful deployments of solutions. Active Directory Port Number TCP/UDP IANA Service Name IANA Description Common Use 135 TCP epmap DCE endpoint resolution RPC Endpoint Mapper 389 TCP/UDP ldap Lightweight Directory Access Protocol LDAP 636 TCP ldaps ldap protocol over TLS/SSL…

  • Building a Nested ESXi Lab for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) (updated 2023-Dec)

    Introduction The following post is very long and will contain updates as the technology changes and I figure out better ways to accomplish these tasks. VMware Cloud Foundation, or VCF, requires at least four nodes for the Management Domain. Unfortunately, I do not have hundreds of thousands of dollars for physical hardware to test and…

  • Reset VxRail Root and Mystic Accounts

    I have been working with clients that are using VxRail for their infrastructure. While administering these VxRail deployments, sometimes the mystic or root accounts get locked, the password’s expire or are just plain lost. Either way, it is a very frustrating situation to find yourself in. Turn to Google and search for reset VxRail Manager…

  • Changing the Primary Network Identifier (PNID) on vCenter

    Preface This has been occurring to me a lot lately. vCenter gets deployed and configured with a hostname. You are likely not giving it much thought until later when a particular situation arises. When it’s time to upload Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates and you receive the following warning, “Error occurred while fetching tls: Invalid…

  • How to Get Values from a Nested Ansible Dictionary

    The following block of code is used to get a list of files from a directory. It then registers a variable with the contents of any files that were found. This next block is used to display the contents of the registered variable. The result of the debug command is below. Notice that the “files”…

  • Prepare vRealize Operations for Ansible

    Adding an Ansible Service Account User to vRealize Operations Connect to the vRealize Operations appliance via the console. Out of the box on an 8.6.3 appliance, the /etc/ssh/sshd_conf file is set to PermitRootLogin yes (line 32, not commented out) and PermitRootLogin no (line 128, not commented out). Since the line disabling root login occurs further…

This is how it all started…

I started this site with the intent to aggregate as much information as possible in one place. I use this to record lessons learned or frustrating configurations I have experienced on the job or just tinkering (learning) and just couldn’t find a better resource available. I have tried to be as thorough and accurate as possible, but technology is rapidly evolving and every environment is different. I may miss things along the way and my setup most likely differs compared to yours.

I hope you find this site has some value to you.

Welcome to Bits, Bytes, and Radio Waves! 

If you have any questions or comments (or just want to give me a shout-out), please feel free to contact me!

Aaron Rombaut

Writer & Technologist