PowerCLI

There was once a time early in my career when I would SSH to each VMware ESXi host and manually update the root account’s password. As time went by and the environment I was responsible for grew larger, so did the workload for resetting root account passwords regularly. Eventually, I researched and learned that these VMware ESXi local user accounts could be modified using VMware PowerCLI, and password updates became a much easier task.

If you have deployed a VMware ESXi 7.0 or 8.0 host containing a TPM 2.0 device, you have likely encountered the “TPM Encryption Recovery Key Backup Alarm” in vCenter reminding you to back up your TPM encryption recovery key. Screenshot showing the “TPM Encryption Recovery Key Backup Alarm” in the VMware vSphere Client If you’re like me, the first time you encountered this, you probably searched Google for this alarm message and ran across VMware KB81661 - “TPM Encryption Recovery Key Backup” warning alarm in vCenter Server.

For several years, VMware has been adding new integration capabilities into new releases of VMware Tools. These capabilities often supported VMware products, including vRealize Operations, NSX, AppDefence, and Carbon Black. The latest product to be integrated into VMware Tools 12.0.0 is VMware vRealize SaltStack Config. VMware Tools 12.0.0 now includes the ability to automate the deployment of the Salt Minion software utilizing vSphere virtual machine guest variables. This new integration makes it easier than ever to deploy new Salt Minions to both new and existing virtual machines.