Bits, Bytes, & Radio Waves

A quiet journey through discovery and understanding.

  • Building a Nested ESXi Lab for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) (updated 2023-Dec)

    Introduction The following post is very long and will contain updates as the technology changes and I figure out better ways to accomplish these tasks. VMware Cloud Foundation, or VCF, requires at least four nodes for the Management Domain. Unfortunately, I do not have hundreds of thousands of dollars for physical hardware to test and…

  • Reset VxRail Root and Mystic Accounts

    I have been working with clients that are using VxRail for their infrastructure. While administering these VxRail deployments, sometimes the mystic or root accounts get locked, the password’s expire or are just plain lost. Either way, it is a very frustrating situation to find yourself in. Turn to Google and search for reset VxRail Manager…

  • Changing the Primary Network Identifier (PNID) on vCenter

    Preface This has been occurring to me a lot lately. vCenter gets deployed and configured with a hostname. You are likely not giving it much thought until later when a particular situation arises. When it’s time to upload Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates and you receive the following warning, “Error occurred while fetching tls: Invalid…

Notes from practice

I use this site to document systems, configurations, and lessons learned as I work through real problems—both professionally and through personal experimentation. The goal is clarity: understand how something works, explain why it behaves the way it does, and make it reliable and repeatable.

These notes are written primarily for myself, but shared openly in case they help someone else avoid a dead end or reduce frustration. If you’d like to learn more, visit the About page.

If you have questions or comments, you’re always welcome to contact me.

Aaron Rombaut

Technologist & Writer