Bits, Bytes, & Radio Waves

A Journey Through Discovery

  • Dell EMC Avamar and VMware 6.5 Snapshot Quiescing Error

    During a rebuild of a Dell EMC Avamar backup solution, we ran into an issue where VMware was logging, “An error occurred while quiescing the virtual machine. See the virtual machine’s event log for details.” for a few virtual machine backups. While testing, we noticed that it was not occurring on all backups. On a…

  • ESXi 6.5 STIG Welcome Message

    So the ESXi 6.5 Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) finally released in May 2019. Unfortunately, some of the items I would have liked to see fixed or updated were not. One of the biggest pet peeves is the Annotations.WelcomeMessage advanced setting check. This setting updates the /etc/vmware/welcome file in the filesystem. If the STIG fix…

  • Making a REST API Request in vRealize Orchestrator

    This was a tough nut to crack for me. I definitely don’t ever want to struggle through learning this topic again. I hope if you are reading this, I can save you a ton of lost time. I use Postman to scope out the concepts before trying to translate them in vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). When…

  • Recover vCenter Appliance after Power/Storage Failure

    Well, this would have saved me quite a bit of time in my past. My storage device got unplugged from the network while my lab was running and vCenter refused to come back. This is expected as the appliance has an embedded database. I found this article from VMware that worked! It took less than…

  • ESXi Ruleset & Firewall Correlation

    Table to correlate VMware Host Profile Firewall Ruleset names to Firewall Names

  • How to Dot Source a PowerShell Script

    Needed to run a self-written PowerShell script outside of ISE and was not able to until dot sourced.

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