Let's Talk About Tech!

Background To the topic of energy consumption and reduction, I always came to the same point : "How can you reduce your energy fingerprint if you have no idea about what your are currently consuming ?!?" This is the reason why I'm monitoring almost every energy I'm consuming. I'm monitoring my water usage, my solar production, and since recently, my electricity usage. I recently been providing by my energy provider with a smart meter and this is a great opportunity to create nice graphs !

Background I've been suspicious about the air quality in my direct environment, my home office, the basement, my pergola, the living room where I have my wood fire. Since my recent Arduino experience I was thinking at creating a all-in-one device that can monitor the ambient air quality. This was before I discovered AirGradient.

Background Ever since I can remember, I've been fascinated with the idea of developing an IoT device capable of responding to my inquiries whenever I seek specific information. Initially, I was under the impression that establishing an API endpoint or server would be a highly complex task, possibly beyond my current skill set. However, I've discovered that this assumption was misplaced. The process is not as daunting as I had imagined.

Background In a previous article , I demonstrated how to control Somfy devices using php and the Somfy API. Now that it's working, we need to identify some useful activities related to this new functionality. Why not begin integrating it into a Home Automation platform like Domoticz? Let's dive into it.

Background I recently bought a pergola with solar blinds, dimmable LEDs and a orientable roof blades. This is great to enjoy the summer without getting too much hot air or direct sun. It is coming with a Somfy Tahoma controller box that allows controlling the different devices with a SmartPhone. How cool is this ? Ok, but how does it work ? Can I control this myself with my own scripts and integrate it into an home automation system ? Let's have a look !

Background I've spent few years creating PhP functions to help with my script journey, but since few releases, Rubrik is pushing to switch the API auth to service account and tokens which means many of my functions are about to die. It was a massive work, I do not want to lose the benefit of it.

Background I've received some very positive messages related to my posts about the Wallbox API. This is very rewarding and I would like to thank all the people who are reaching out 🙏🏻. In the comments, I've see people asking for API to restart the unit remotely. Since API only limit is the sky, let's see what can be done.

Background Recently, Rubrik is enforcing the 2FA authentication (Multi Factor Authentication). This is a great security feature that minimizes the risk of unauthorized access to your environment. But how does it work within a script ? There is no way to enter a 2FA code when running a script every day at 2 am for example. The 2FA is enforced starting at CDM v 8.0.2 with a 3 month grace period to allow the customers to adjust their security.

Background In the previous episode about "using API and Wallbox", we have seen some interesting ways to interact with the charger. In this episode, the goal is to add some more practical examples. Indeed, if you are following my GitHub repo on this topic, I have added some functions for pausing, resuming the charging session as well as locking and unlocking the charger. Also, I can set the charging power to a certain number of Amps. Let's see this in action !

Background I would like to automate the Nutanix AHV cluster addition on my Rubrik appliances. Either for testing purpose or for more general deployments. In order to achieve this, you need to perform couple of actions and clicks in the UI. But since the Rubrik UI is API-First, of course, that should be doable via API call ? Isn't it ? But why limiting this to only adding new Cluster ? Let's see...

Background Sending REST API calls to the cluster is sometimes slow and not very efficient. I came across some interesting posts on that topic. It looks like while REST is getting all the results (even the one you are not interested with) it exist another query type that only returns what you are looking for. This is GraphQL. Let's have a look !

Background We have a quite large AHV infrastructure and sometimes this is not always easy to get all the relevant details to improve/maintain it. Don't get me wrong, Prism Central is helping a lot. But, when it comes to optimisation of the assets, it is hard to see what gains we can make - starting by detecting the powered off VMs.

Background While working on a AHV cluster, you can notice that, with time, the storage decreases. This is obvious, all VMs are using thin-provisioning by default. Doing some cleanup and maintenance is required on every IT systems and Nutanix does not escape the rule. One area where we are not focusing enough is the snapshots we are creating and most of the time forgot !

Background     I did a mistake - we all do - I have changed the specs on the wrong VMs and of course I did not recall the original settings. I thought I could get them from my backup since all these details are retained when we need to export the VM. Ok, but how ?

Background After publishing my post about Rubrik Central  months ago, I have received comments saying that it is too difficult to deploy and has too many pre-requisites. I thought about automating the deployment process in many ways and found that containers could be a nice option. But I didn't know anything about Docker. So, I did some research and I think I came across with something definitely usable !

Background I have a home automation system at home (you know that from the Yamaha  article ) and I would like to know the travel time while having breakfast. Always good to plan ahead for any hiccup on the road. Easy to get this info on Google map, but you need a browser and a few clicks, I would like something automated !

Background Yes, Yamaha, I know this is not an usual topic on this blog, but don't worry, we will still code a little ;) Modern amplifiers and home cinema's are now connected. Some with wifi, some with ethernet. It would be nice to have the ability to control them. Mine is a RX-V673, too old to have WiFi but I have an Ethernet port. There is a smartphone app as well. If there is connectivity and an app, for sure we can hack it !

Background Now that we have seen how to get and apply categories and values to VMs, it is about time to learn how to create categories and values. Indeed, to be able to apply categories to VMs they first need to be created and ready to be used. Nutanix allows us to create whatever categories we have in mind.

Background As an IT guy focusing on security for privileged accounts, you would like to have a single source of authentication to facilitate user access to resources. Rubrik is a sensitive platform since anyone with admin access to that platform can read/steal data from your Enterprise. It would be nice to authenticate any access to that platform using LDAP or AD. Rubrik got you covered !

Background Managing Categories (tags), within a Nutanix environment can be cumbersome, especially if you have big amount of VMs or if you want to automate the process and why not, react on triggers. Hopefully, Nutanix is giving you the power.I just finished couple of functions and added them to my Nutanix Php Framework !