[NoBrainer] Using Graylog2 REST API via PowerShell
Graylog2 comes with a very limited alerting feature where you can basically only create alerts based on a single field. However, and thus far I can follow the motivation of […]
HOWTO: Create a LightSwitch compatible OData REST Web API Endpoint without EntityFramework
LightSwitch can consume ODATA data source that you can use to gain more flexibility than using the internal data sources that also generate ODATA REST endpoints. Microsoft Web API provides an easy way on how to generate these endpoints. In this post I quickly describe the steps you need to take to actually create an endpoint that is actually usable […]
biz.dfch.PS.vCAC.Utilities PowerShell Module available
Finally I made it and found the time to upload the biz.dfch.PS.vCAC.Utilties PowerShell module! It is available for download at Github and NuGet (see below for links) and placed under the Apache 2.0 license. How to install: Copy the module along with the XML configuration file into a directory with the same name as the module under a path that […]
[NoBrainer] Set Credentials on ADSI WinNT Provider operations with PowerShell
Here is a quick post as a reminder because I tend to forget myself and documentation on the Internet is not really pointing you to the solution right away … When using the ADSI provider in PowerShell (for example to use WinNT) and you want to perform the actual operation with different credentials than the currently logged on user you […]
LightSwitch: Modifying roles, permissions and users via PowerShell
Using the built-in RBAC feature of LightSwitch is really cool and easy to use until you have to assign all of your application defined permissions to roles and users. This is usually where the Administration DesktopClient does not scale too well… But of course there is help: and it is especially easy, when you utilize PowerShell to tackle that task. […]
HttpClient and how to use Headers, Content-Type and PostAsync
As you might have already heard and tried out with .NET 4.5 (or so) Microsoft blessed us with a new and shiny HttpClient that should be easier to use, support async programming and (that’s best) finally allow the user to set any headers without reverting to some workaround code (cf. WebClient and its underlying classes). And it is actually true […]
Being serious about the command table pattern – and adding security to it
Reading Paul’s article Being serious about the Command Table Pattern definitely helped me on a tricky problem I had to solve for a customer. However when you really make heavy use of that you will notice that you now have only reduced security features available. For example, when you want selected users to only read a specific “Verb” or command […]
Child Processes in vCAC Stubs are killed upon Exit of the Parent Process
When you have a vCAC stub (i.e. ‘BuildingMachine’ or any other stub) and invoke a script or process (like a PowerShell script) and from that script you start a new process as direct descendant of the original process it will be killed by vCAC when the stub exits. vCAC seems to search all processes and compares their Parent ProcessID against […]
vCAC and the difficult way to delete a Virtual Machine
The vCAC user interface is functional but has quite some limitations when you want to do selection based on different criteria the user enters. So for example, it is not possible to have cascading dropdown lists based on two parent lists or values. Furthermore you cannot select a physicl machine based on its location. And there are plenty more examples […]
Getting most out of vCAC without a CDK license
Did you ever get the response from VMware support or anyone else ‘for this you need a CDK license to make it work’? As it turns out this is a costly thing to have and in most cases you will not need it anyway. In addition, if you really come across something the ‘CloudUtil.exe’ does not let you do, you […]
[vCAC52] Change VirtualMachine Reservation and StoragePath – Revisited
Some time back I showed a way on how one can change the placement while provisioning. The central problem is that the placement takes place in that moment when the user submits his machine request. So at any step during the provisioning the placement has already been determined and resources already have been allocated. During my research regarding the import […]
Introducing the vCAC VMPS SOAP ProvisionService
Besides the well used ManagementContext vCAC also has some SOAP services for basic infrastructure communication and provisioning. With the ProvisionService, VMPS for short, you get a wrapper around some basic vCAC workflows and helper functions that abstract data manipulation of the MangementContext and others. Using this service with PowerShell is pretty straightforward with the help of the ‘New-WebServiceProxy’ Cmdlet. For […]
Investigating vCAC 5.2 Models
When you play with vCAC workflow and scripts you will most certainly work with the ManagementModelEntitesClient or the MgmtContext for short. Have a look at my introduction to it in this blog post. But there is actually more in vCAC than just that. Out of the box vCAC ships with these models: And some of them are actually quite useful. […]
Running a vCAC Workflow from PowerShell
Calling PowerShell from vCAC is easy, right. But how about the other way round? Suppose you want to start the ‘ReclaimDestroyedStaticIPAddresses’ or the ‘WFStubMachineExpired’ workflow manually? As usual this can be done via the vCAC MetaModel ODATA REST service and of course with PowerShell. For a brief overview about the MetaModel you can have a look at Investigating vCAC 5.2 […]
Change Ownership of a vCAC Machine and Inform user via mail with PowerShell
When you want to change the owner of a machine in vCAC you would probably like to inform the owner of what he just acquired. The easist thing is to to send an update notification via vCACs VMPS SOAP (ProvisionService) service: You can ignore the error message and wrap it into a try/catch block to hide it. If you get […]
Importing existing Virtual Machines in vCAC automatically via PowerShell
In case you would like to import existing machines into vCAC you have the option to import them via ‘Discovery’ from within the GUI. But if you wanted to import more than a few machines at a time this might become a little more than tedious. Of course you can always revert back to AutoIT or something similar to do […]
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