Automation

  • Use-Ansible-AWX-to-Automate-Linux-Updates-and-Patches

    Use Ansible AWX to Automate Linux Updates and Patches

    Let’s face it, keeping your VMs and environments updated is a necessary evil that we all realize we need to do for security, stability, and enhancements. Especially from a security perspective, updates are essential. We often hear focus on Windows…

  • Automated-Windows-10-Installation-with-AutoUnattend-and-Packer

    Automated Windows 10 Installation with AutoUnattend and Packer

    Not too long ago, I covered in a post called Create Unattend Answer File for Windows Server 2019 Automated Packer Installation. In carrying this further with continued automation of Windows machines for lab environments, I wanted to put together a…

  • Use-Ansible-to-Update-OUI-tables-in-Arpwatch

    Use Ansible to Update OUI tables in Arpwatch

    As most of you are aware, I have written a few posts about Arpwatch and the great value it provides in a network for visibility. It can help to uncover not only network issues that may exist, but also potential…

  • Getting-Started-with-Packer-and-VMware-vSphere

    Getting Started with Packer and VMware vSphere

    Automation is the key to success in today’s fast paced world of hybrid infrastructure. Gone are the days of spending hours or days on build processes and infrastructure engineers holding up any part of the development pipeline. Today’s world of…

  • Terraform-Build-running-an-apply-of-a-VMware-virtual-machine

    Sysprep and VMware Guest Customization with Terraform

    Continuing into my own automation learning objectives this year, I am diving a bit deeper down the Terraform rabbit hole and want to share a few more things learned over the past few weeks with this automation tool. Terraform is…

  • Terraform-apply-successful-run-virtual-machine-is-created-and-customized

    Basic Terraform Installation and VMware vSphere Automation

    One of the great tools in automation and DevOps today is Hashicorp’s Terraform.  Terraform is a great way to provide powerful automation in most any environment spanning on-premise infrastructure to public cloud environments.  One of the many advantages of utilizing…

  • Running-an-Ansible-Tower-job-task-with-successes-and-failures

    Manage and Configure Windows Servers with Ansible Tower

    Ansible Tower provides a really nice GUI interface to managing an Ansible deployment.  Additionally, it provides the ability to create job templates, scheduling, and notifications which definitely add to the power of Ansible Tower in configuration management. Ansible Tower is…

  • Getting-a-Kerberos-ticket-from-Active-Directory-in-Ubuntu-for-use-in-Ansible

    Configure Ansible Windows Server Kerberos authentication in Ubuntu

    Managing Windows Servers with Ansible is a powerful way to perform configuration management and to remediate configuration skew in a server environment. As we have already explored basic Windows Server automation with Ansible and how to bootstrap Windows Server configuration…

  • Overview-of-Ansible-directory-structure

    Bootstrap Windows Server Configuration with Ansible Playbooks

    In our previous Ansible post covering basic Windows Server automation with Ansible, we looked at how to get an ansible server up and running as well as how to get the Ansible server connected to a Windows Server that we…

  • Viewing-the-WinRM-settings-on-a-Windows-server

    Basic Windows Server Automation with Ansible

    We have already looked at installing Ansible Tower for GUI administration of Ansible which we will go back to. I want to back up a little bit and cover working with Ansible from the command line, showing how easy it…