TL;DR - I’m going to be joining VMware as a Senior Cloud Management Specialist Systems Engineer in February 2019. #BeyondExcited From humble beginnings… "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Lao Tzu My IT career started whilst still studying for my final year at University working for a major UK retail bank. I was happy there but not really fulfilled. Within 5 years I was TUPE’d into a large Service Provider.

Written by Christopher Lewis on December 11, 2018.

VMware

At this years VMworld Europe Hackathon, I was a part of Team #PowerVKE, founding members: Chris Porter ( @uprightvinyl ) (Team Leader) Christopher Lewis ( @thecloudxpert ) Dave Simpson ( @bfd_diplomacy ) Stephen Hackers ( @StephenHackers ) Tony Cota ( @VMXBandit ) Colin Westwater ( @cwestwater ) Dominik Zorgnotti ( @DominikZ ) Team PowerVKE (Image courtesy of @StephenHackers) PowerVKE is a PowerShell module that can be used to connect to VMware’s Kubernetes Engine (VKE).

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 27, 2018.

Barcelona Hackathon PKS PowerVKE VMware VMworld VMworld 2018

VMworld 2018 started quickly for me. After taking the 10:20 BA Flight from Heathrow I landed at ~13:30 local time. I had just enough time to drop the bags at the hotel before heading to the #vRetreat. We were being hosted by Patrick Redknap and sponsored by Cohesity . #vRetreat This was my first experience of the #vRetreat concept and I wasn’t disappointed. The session was given by Cohesity’s charismatic CTO - Global Field, Rawlinson Rivera ( @punchingclouds ) who talked both about their current portfolio and Vision.

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 8, 2018.

Barcelona Cohesity VMware VMworld VMworld 2018 VMworld2018 vRetreat

#vRockstar For me, this event marks the official #vCommunity start of “VMworld week” in Barcelona. This was my third year at the pre-VMworld party, vRockstar. As usual, the event was oversubscribed and sold out in record time weeks in advance. With another change in location this year, the event was held at the Obama English Pub/Grill ( https://obamabcn.com/ ). The venue was nice albeit a little smaller than the previous venues, the staff were nice and the food was awesome (once it had arrived).

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 7, 2018.

Barcelona vExpert VMworld VMworld2018 vRockstar

This year I was lucky enough to be given a #vExpert blogger pass to the VMworld 2018 Europe event in Barcelona. This will be my third year in a row! #AchievementUnlocked #vExpert #Blogger #VMworld2018 pic.twitter.com/4ry8Mog0yj — Christopher Lewis 🇬🇧🇺🇦 (@thecloudxpert) November 5, 2018 Posts Here is a list of all my planned posts of the event: vRetreat - Cohesity vRockstar VMware {Code} Hackathon (Team #PowerVKE) ) Keep checking back for this and more content!

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 7, 2018.

Barcelona vExpert VMworld VMworld 2018

Just a short one for this post. Read all about my views on VMware Cloud on AWS (VMConAWS) in this new article . TL:DR Version VMConAWS is an #awesome joint proposition from VMware and AWS but like with most Public Cloud Platforms/Services, it isn’t without its barriers to adoption. However, we have to remember that the service is in initial availability so therefore it is expected that the service may have some limitations and options that are not available right now.

Written by Christopher Lewis on October 17, 2018.

VMware VMConAWS

Introduction I have been working on deploying VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM) 1.2 for a customer into their environment. One of the customer requirements was to be able to use SSO and RBAC with vRSLCM. The only way to this in vRSLCM is to VMware Identity Manager (VIDM). Whilst this process is semi-automated, it hasn’t been as easy as it should have been. Following on from my initial article ( VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager – The tale of SSO and RBAC ) I came up against another issue that I thought was worth sharing.

Written by Christopher Lewis on October 8, 2018.

VMware Identity Manager VMware vRealize Suite vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager vRSLCM

Introduction Recently I was asked to deliver a solution for VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM) 1.2 for a customer to support their requirement for content management between VMware vRealize Automation 7.3.1 environments. The reason we decided to use vRSLCM rather than VMware vRealize CodeStream Management Pack for IT DevOps (AKA Houdini) was we wanted to future proof the solution. If you didn’t know, from VMware vRealize Automation 7.4 onward, the Houdini functionality has been deprecated and is not supported.

Written by Christopher Lewis on October 7, 2018.

VMware vRealize Suite vRSLCM

The Session Builder for the VMworld Europe 2018 content catalog is now live! So if you’re going to be in Barcelona in November, you best head on over to the VMworld Scheduler site and get your sessions booked in before the spaces run out! My VMworld Focus Areas Personally, I will try to limit my focus to three main themes this year because there really isn’t enough time in the 3-4 days:

Written by Christopher Lewis on September 25, 2018.

Barcelona vExpert VMware VMworld VMworld 2018

VMware have just released the latest version of their networking monitoring tool, VMware vRealize Network Insight 3.8. The cool new features include: vRealize Log Insight integration. Increased monitoring of AWS Availability Zones. Cisco ASA support. Check out the Release Notes

Written by Christopher Lewis on June 19, 2018.

Network Insight NSX VMware