Red Hat Summit 2018 – Ansible Demo with NetApp Cloud Manager – Part Two – The Playbooks

by Matthew KimlerNo Comments
It was asked to have the playbooks shared with the community from the Ansible demo that was presented at the Red Hat Summit. Down below, I have each of the playbooks posted for anyone to take a look at and review. Please note that since this was my first time messing around with Ansible, there are most likely cleaner ways to do some of these activities, but these worked for our demo and should be a good starting point for others that want to try it out. Each playbook was broken into sections, but there's no reason that you could not put all of these into a single playbook. With that said, here you go! Playbook #1 - Basic Provisioning of EC2 instances in AWS. --- # Basic provisioning of EC2 instances. - name: Create AWS resources hosts: localhost connection: local gather_facts: False tasks: - name: Create an EC2 instance ec2: aws_access_key:...
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Red Hat Summit 2018 – Ansible Demo with NetApp Cloud Manager

by Matthew Kimler2 Comments
It's been a long time, so first apologies for being out of pocket for some time. It's been a very busy past few months with work and family. However, I'm back and I wanted to start off with a video demo that I created for the Red Hat 2018 Summit in San Francisco in May. At the conference, IAS decided to get a booth to meet with Red Hat customers and represent both Red Hat and NetApp. We decided that the best way to show off our experience with the two partners was to create a simple demonstration that might be of interest to attendees. Robert Nelson, another IAS engineer, and I put something together that we're both proud of. We chose to make a demo of how Ansible could be used to automate the deployment of Amazon EC2 instances, make some modifications, and then leverage a NetApp AWS instance to use our once on-premise data and use it on our...
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vRealize Business for Cloud – Lost EC2 Instances?

by Matthew KimlerNo Comments
This one is going to be short and sweet, at least it was to me. I upgraded my vRealize Automation environment in our IAS lab to version 7.3. I had a few hiccups because of an old IaaS node that had been replaced and never cleaned up (which you can read about in my other post this week), but other than it was pretty smooth. I also took the opportunity to upgrade the vRealize Business for Cloud to 7.3 to keep everything the same version, as a good engineer would. :) There were quite a few updates to vRB this time around, and those familiar with vRB will noticed the significant changes to the UI layout and reporting. A lot of the plumbing is similar when you start to drill down into things, but some new information is now available for customers. I'm not going to go through all of the new features in this post, but if you want to read...
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vRealize Automation – Removing an IaaS Node

by Matthew KimlerNo Comments
Recently in my lab, I was frustrated over an attempted upgrade to version 7.3 from version 7.2 of vRealize Automation. It had been a while since I had last used my vRA deployment, so I naturally assumed I was probably bound for some sort of issue due to neglect. However, typically I can figure these things out pretty quickly and go along my way. This time was different and the solution, was frankly disappointing. Perhaps a lack of understanding on my part, but I think it was more of a lack of documentation from VMware on vRealize Automation. When I attempted to upgrade the vRA appliance to 7.3, I received an error in the Upgrade panel stating the following: The VMware certificate was not installed on the nodes listed below. Make sure the Management Agent is up and running on them and that it has connectivity to the VA. It then displayed a single IaaS server from my lab. When I took a...
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A Circle in a Round Hole

by Matthew Kimler Comment Closed
I'm pretty sure that the title is confusing, but Jameson's education is always fascinating to me. Several months ago, we purchased various Fisher-Price toys, either that has educational or fun value. At this age, I'm pretty sure it's a bit of both because learning is fun when everything is just new and colorful. One of the toys we purchased is a pretty typical shapes blocks game. I'm guessing we bought this when he was about six months old. In a typical fashion, the goal for him at that stage was to just pick them up and drop them and really had nothing to do with putting something in a hole. In fact, the main goal was not to put anything in the bucket. But as months progressed, this simple game changed a lot. First it was keep the blocks out of the bucket and toss the yellow top. Next, the goal was to toss the blocks behind him, but he enjoyed when...
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IAS Seattle Security Conference 2017

by Matthew KimlerNo Comments
Yesterday, I was honored to host one of the panelist discussions at the IAS Security Conference in Seattle. I hosted the panel on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) while my counterpart, Tim Adams, hosted the session on IoT Security. From the audience attendance and engagement, I believe the sessions were well received and educational. As usual, I'm always pleased on the number of questions that come from the audience when it comes to GDPR. Even though we're only a few months away from the go live date for GDPR, there are still customers struggling to understand how the GDPR impacts them and what can be done to be compliant. But I think there is a comfort in knowing that other organizations are also struggling with the same thing that they are. Working together, we get the answers we're looking for and get compliant. A special thanks for the panelist involved in the GDPR discussion: Keith Deighton - Hitachi Systems Security - https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-deighton-9361901/ Derek Keen...
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GDPR Webinar Series – Episode Three – Veritas

by Matthew KimlerNo Comments
We held another great GDPR webinar series, this time with Veritas. Veritas has quite a few solutions that address several components of the GDPR initiative. Additionally, they are one of the few vendors we work with that also offer risk assessments on an organization's readiness with the new regulation, including risk analysis and prioritization. If you still wondering how you should approach the GDPR compliance initiative or just need help figuring out where to start, check out the webinar and reach out to IAS if you want to learn more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7stC0RAtBOA...
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Monteray Bay Aquarium

by Matthew Kimler Comment Closed
This weekend the family took another trip and this time to the aquarium at Monteray Bay. If you haven't been, it's a great place to visit with or without children. For kids, there are learning spaces set aside for some cool activities and educational sessions. They also post their feeding schedule for the animal life if want to watch the penguins eat or something of that nature. Since Jameson is still quite young to enjoy all of the aspects of the aquarium, we have definitely seen him engage more when it comes to fish, especially the bright colored ones. It may be the colors, the movement, or just the fact that you can get very close to the glass to see things. Once he finds something interesting, he really locks onto it. And the facial expression of wonderment is just too incredible to not stare at. It's quite amazing to behold. If you happen to visit, be sure to see the...
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Happy Halloween 2017

by Matthew Kimler Comment Closed
Halloween always amazes me in just how many children visit our house for candy. This year was no different when we blew through two 150-piece bags of candy, giving only one candy per child. We had a few remaining, but I estimate we had probably 270 kids come by. That's insanity. But the highlight was also getting Jameson dressed for his first Halloween. There was a lengthy discussion on what he should be. I honestly can't remember all of the things that we thought would be best for his first time around. In the end, we selected something that that was fun, hopefully was somewhat comfortable for him, and of course high on the cute factor. We only did a show off for the local street neighbors, but I think he had a good time. I'm guessing for him, I think it was mostly shock and confusion. Happy Halloween!  ...
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Livermore Pumpkin Patch 2017

by Matthew Kimler Comment Closed
Livermore has one of the best pumpkin patch farms during the Halloween season in the East Bay. You can find it at Joan's Farm and Pumpkin Patch every year around Halloween. Along with the pumpkins, kids can do hay rides, hit the corn maze and go through various farming museum exhibits. They also have a collection of animals such as donkeys, ponies, and goats that you can feed and pet. The farm is kept quite clean and organized for families to entertain their children. Jameson is still a little too young to do most of the activities, but we think he had a great time just exploring and looking at the animals and pumpkins. I highly recommend Joan's Farm for pumpkin picking. It's free to go and the only costs are the activities, pumpkins and feed for the animals. https://www.yelp.com/biz/joans-farm-and-pumpkin-patch-livermore  ...
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