vCenter Server Appliance 6.0

Got some cycles in on the lab today and decided to work on vCenter Server Appliance. The first thing that you need to take care of is local DNS. In the past I have always run a windows server.  I decided to see about an appliance. Infoblox has one, and so does Men and Mice. Both led to registration, request for downloads. Which I still haven’t received. As I was poking around and I found the VM that was my old DNS server.  I was able to import and update it without too much Yak Shaving. DNS, ✓

Its been a while since I have installed the Appliance. I was a bit surprised to find out that the appliance is still heavily dependent on Windows to install. There is plenty of docs and blogs on how to install the appliance, so I won’t duplicate here. At a high level you mount the ISO to a windows image, install a windows program, and then that program deploys the Linux Appliance. 

The windows dependency comes in because while the end product is an appliance, it is an appliance that can have many configurations. The installation wizard (the aforementioned windows component) leads you through a series of questions.  Do you want to embed the platform controller? Is this a stand alone platform controller? What about SSO? Do you want to use Postgres or Oracle? The install actually builds the Appliance based on your answers. Hence why an ISO versus an OVA.

The windows install (OVA builder) took about 20 minutes to run. Just when I thought things had gone wrong and started to go look for log files, it finished. 

After an EBKBAC error I was able to log in. I must have mistyped my login. For the life of me I could not log in. Then I read the fine print about close the window and try again. Once I did that I was able to log in and have vCenter running. 

Alexa Nest

Sometimes our house gets a bit warm in the middle of the night. It sucks to have to turn on the blaring iPhone screen to adjust the Nest. I thought to myself wouldn’t it be cool (pun intended?) to have Alexa take care of things for me. 

I started out with the goal of having Alexa turn on our HVAC fan. Logged into the Alexa app and it does have Nest integration. Turned it on and spent the next 15 minutes in the I hate Alexa category. You can’t just turn on the fan. Alexa wants to turn on the AC. Okay so maybe not a bad thing, but even giving in, I could never get her to understand my request to make the upstairs cooler and turn on the AC. 

Time for plan B. Jumped over to ifttt.com. Activated the Nest and Alexa channels. Created a trigger channel to turn on the fan. Moving back into the I love Alexa category. With the simple phrase “Alexa trigger  turn on the upstairs fan" the fan will turn on! 

Solar Fountain

Years ago we got a fountain for our anniversary. It has an electric pump. We used it every once in a while when we felt like plugging it in. When we moved to the Church my wife decided to hang it where it could be seen all the time, but there is no electric plug. 

What to do? Go with her plan, its just a decoration now? Figure out how to run electricity to it? Then it hit me, Solar! I first started my Amazon search for a Solar electrical plug. This took me down a bit of a wrong path, because it led to fairly expensive systems. hundreds of dollars,  that are able to generate a lot of electricity and inverters to convert to AC. I was fairly certain the pump had to be DC to start with, which got me thinking. 

I modified my search and sure enough quickly found myself looking at a solar powered water pump. And for $15 what did I have to loose?

Installation was breeze. Simply replaced the current pump with the Solar one, and place the solar panel on top of the fence. In the video you can see the pump running with the solar panel in the top right.  It will also add a bit of fun to see just how much sun it needs to run the pump. 

Update: Had just a bit of a cloud move in front of the sun. Something wispy enough that you probably wouldn't have noticed. The water immediately stopped flowing. Started right back up as soon as the cloud moved. A little bit surprised at how sensitive the panel is.

06/06/16: Looks like the pump is running from a bit after 9AM to a bit after 4PM.

Garageio->MyQ

One of my ex-sun co-workers tweeted about Garage. I was smitten and started to budget for it. Several items played against me on this one. First the garage door opened died and I had to use the funds for the Garageio to get a new opener. Then we started thinking about moving and I held off till we got to the Church. Then I discovered the garage door opener that came with the church was not Garageio compatible. And of course we had friends over for dinner one night and all they could talk about was how cool their Garageio was. 

Our opener is a Liftmaster and it has an Internet gateway. I decided to give it a whirl. The setup was ridiculously simple. Plug the device into power and your router, create an account, download the app. The app guides you through adding your garage door opener as a device. You have to hit the learn button, like any other remote, but since you are doing it through the app, you can be in the garage to do it. Nice touch! 

In all of about 10 minutes we now have an Internet enabled garage door opener. A unique feature is when you close the door with the app, the touch pad in the garage sounds an alarm as a fair warning. I am guessing they had to add this since you are closing the door without line of site of it.  Truly loving the notifications when the door opens and closes, and the ability to double check the door is closed.

 

Sugru

Yet another thing I saw on KickStarter that I thought was cool, is Sugru. Alas I couldn’t figure out what I would ever use it for, and decide to pass. Flash forward a few years, and I decided to pick some up. Heck if it was on hand, maybe I would think something up to use it for. 

I recently switched out my sprinkler clock. The old one sat vertical. The new one horizontal. I quickly realized I was going to have a hole in the wall. Umm… SUGRU!  

I had about half the package left, and was contemplating what else to do with it. Then an idea struck me. The Church builder put our gate handle right up against the wall so you drag your knuckles on the stucco every time you open it. Sugru!! 

Both applications have been holding up for about a week. It will be interesting to see how the hold up over time. 

IoT Sprinklers

My IoT journey actually started with sprinklers about 6 years ago. In our old house we had 2 systems. One in the front, one in the back. To top off that design decision they ran the control cables smack dad to the middle, which meant they were in the basement under the staircase, and installed the clock. For normal operations no big deal, but when you were working on them you had to run up and down the stairs to the basement tracking dirt through the house. Very inconvenient to say the least. 

I actually started the journey by prototyping an Aurdino to run the sprinklers. But as such things go, time was always a factor and in one of my searches I found an EtherRain. It’s an incredible simple device. An ethernet port to call home to the LawnCheck website,  low voltage ports to drive the solenoids, and enough firmware to process the schedules. The device is so simple, so rock solid, that I set it up once, and never touched it again. Over the years, I would use the website to control my schedules, but I never actually touched the EtherRain. 

When Rachio, hit kickstarter, I so desperately wanted to participate, but hey if it ain’t broken… I continued to ride my EtherRain. About 2 years ago, I got my lucky break. My father called because their 30 years old clock had stopped functioning. A quick trip over to their house to verify it was dead, and I was off like lightning to Home Depot to get a Rachio. The Gen1 Rachio was so much superior to the EtherRain, I had serious clock envy, which was tempered a bit, by getting to set things up for the rents. 

Flash forward to today. When we moved into the church I knew one of my first projects was going to be to replace the horrible clock that the builder installed. The challenge was that our clock is outside and I knew the Rachio was for indoor use. I figured someone had to have figured out how to mount it outside. I hit up google and sure enough, someone had. Rachio! There is now a Gen2 device which can be mounted outside. 

The Gen2 clock was a tad bit more difficult to install than the Gen1. Nothing to do with the Rachio, but with the outside mount. The outside mount for the Rachio needs to be have a plug added to it. I was able to take the plug off my old clock, and use it for the Rachio. I have a simple device to check that the wiring is correct in an outlet and in about ~45 minutes I had the box mounted to the wall, and wired for electricity. 

Once the box was mounted it took all of about 5 minutes to install the Rachio and get it on-line. The app is awesome, and I appreciate the water saving features.