Homelab: VCF 9 in a box
February 3, 2026
Step-by-step guide to building a compact VCF 9 homelab: hardware BOM, licensing options, 2-node tweaks, ESXi install, and deployment tips. … More Homelab: VCF 9 in a box
VRA doesn’t start
November 2, 2025
You know that feeling when you’re all set to start working on something, your plan is clear, and you’re ready to take action — but your homelab decides otherwise? That was me recently. I urgently needed a few print screens for a presentation I was giving at the UK VMUG, but of course, that’s exactly … More VRA doesn’t start
Troubleshooting vRA Orchestrator Deployment Failure Through LCM
October 18, 2025
If you’ve ever deployed vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) through Lifecycle Manager (LCM) and hit strange errors during first boot, you’re not alone.Recently, I ran into exactly that situation while setting up an Orchestrator in one of my vRA tenants — and what looked like a simple network issue turned out to be a great troubleshooting lesson. … More Troubleshooting vRA Orchestrator Deployment Failure Through LCM
LCM snapshot creation fails on health-check
October 7, 2025
It was time to update my Aria Automation certificates. Luckily this is an automated process you can execute through LCM, a process which is way easier than before. But for security reasons I always take a snapshot of my current environment.However when I wanted to take my snapshot, I got an error during the precheck … More LCM snapshot creation fails on health-check
Not able to connect with configadmin
August 10, 2025
Kristof, what did you do wrong now? 🙂 Well in my multi-tenant environment I deleted my original “configadmin” account. I did that because I wanted to change my naming convention of my accounts. Once I created my new account through LCM, it was time to test my connection.Well to my big surprise I got a … More Not able to connect with configadmin
Configure your windows workstation for Aria Build Tools
May 27, 2025
It took me a while till I had everything sorted out to be able to push my packages to vRO/vRA so I documented my process. If I ever need to do it again I can always come back to my own blog 😀 and hopefully it also helps some of you in the process.At the … More Configure your windows workstation for Aria Build Tools
Adding a proxy to Aria Automation
May 24, 2025
I just deployed Aria automation and was busy configuring my deployment. When I tried to make a connection to VMC on AWS I received this “Invalid API token” error. What I forgot was, that although I had all the connectivity I needed on my jump server. I needed a proxy server for my appliances.So I … More Adding a proxy to Aria Automation
Infoblox integration and IP assignment
February 15, 2025
It’s been a while since I’ve added a new blog post, but changing career to freelancer has quite an impact on your free time. But my good intentions for 2025 is to blog more again 😀 The infoblox integration took me some time to get all the settings right, so I thought this makes a … More Infoblox integration and IP assignment
Restore ESXi network connectivity after you lost (or in my case deleted) your vCenter
March 14, 2024
Ok another booboo for the books 🙂 . After several troubleshooting attempts I wasn’t able to restore my vCenter. At that time I kind had it, and in a moment of frustration, I deleted my vCenter without thinking to much about it. Now if you have distributed switches, like me, you automatically create an issue. … More Restore ESXi network connectivity after you lost (or in my case deleted) your vCenter
vIDM upgrade fails on precheck OVFENV
May 21, 2023
This weekend I wanted to upgrade my vIDM. But as you know my luck by now, I got an error during the upgrade. It was giving me a “Failed” status during the pre-check. Content blog article 1.First attempt There’s a KB article that describes the issue I’m having but it didn’t bring me the complete … More vIDM upgrade fails on precheck OVFENV
Kristof's virtual life 