I’m a bit late on posting this. But, better late than never. I’ve been renewed again as a VMware vExpert for 2025. This is my seventh consecutive year since I first applied. Woohoo!!

If you haven’t met me, then you should know the image for this post is not how I look at all. That guy is way better looking than me. I also don’t have anywhere near that amount of hair. I decided to create a generic IT guy holding a placard claiming to be a 7-time vExpert. I used the AI image site, NightCafe. It has a paid tier for creating images, but I use the free tier. Check it out sometime.

As part of my job, I regularly demonstrate Pure Storage features and how VMware solutions integrate seamlessly with our storage platform. Before a demo, I usually will confirm the software I intend to use is in good working order, but this isn’t always the case. The demo lab is used by many of my colleagues. This means that during their use of the lab something could have stopped working or is in a wonky state. So, Murphy’s Law could rear its ugly head at the most inconvenient time if I cannot confirm all is well beforehand.

I recently wrote about a little issue where I had to quickly get my lab hosts and vCenter upgraded to vSphere 7.0U3k luckily vSphere Lifecycle Manager saved me. During that process I discovered in vCenter there are a bunch of API calls you can make directly from the CLI once you SSH into vCenter.