Bits, Bytes, & Radio Waves

A quiet journey through discovery and understanding.

  • VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and Third-Party Certificates

    Using Third-Party Certificates with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) I consider this a “Day 1.5” task—VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) has been successfully deployed (Day 1), but there’s still some essential configuration work to be done before handing it off to the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) team for Day 2 operations. Certificate Management in VCF By default,…

  • VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Bundle Transfer Utility (v 5.2) and Offline Depot with Photon OS 5 (Archived)

    This post covers building an offline depot for VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 using the legacy Bundle Transfer Utility on Photon OS. It focuses on Photon-specific setup details, repository configuration, and operational considerations encountered in the field. While archived, the content remains relevant for customers supporting existing VCF 5.x environments.

  • ESXi – iSCSI Boot from SAN

    If you’re setting up iSCSI boot from SAN for your ESXi hosts, there’s an important detail to keep in mind right from the start: each ESXi host gets its own dedicated LUN. That means there’s a one-to-one relationship between LUNs and hosts—these boot LUNs can’t be shared across multiple hosts. Once your hosts are up…

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