Bits, Bytes, & Radio Waves

A quiet journey through discovery and understanding.

  • Dell EMC Avamar and VMware 6.5 Snapshot Quiescing Error

    During a rebuild of a Dell EMC Avamar backup solution, we ran into an issue where VMware was logging, “An error occurred while quiescing the virtual machine. See the virtual machine’s event log for details.” for a few virtual machine backups. While testing, we noticed that it was not occurring on all backups. On a…

  • ESXi 6.5 STIG Welcome Message

    So the ESXi 6.5 Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) finally released in May 2019. Unfortunately, some of the items I would have liked to see fixed or updated were not. One of the biggest pet peeves is the Annotations.WelcomeMessage advanced setting check. This setting updates the /etc/vmware/welcome file in the filesystem. If the STIG fix…

  • Making a REST API Request in vRealize Orchestrator

    This was a tough nut to crack for me. I definitely don’t ever want to struggle through learning this topic again. I hope if you are reading this, I can save you a ton of lost time. I use Postman to scope out the concepts before trying to translate them in vRealize Orchestrator (vRO). When…

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