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Notes from the lab bench

Infrastructure, networking, architecture, platform engineering, homelab and automation. The things I work on and the things I'm interested in, which turn out to be mostly the same list.

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24 July 2026

VCF 9.1: The vLCM Image You Can't Delete in the GUI

In VCF Operations 9.1 you can export a custom vLCM cluster image but there's no button to delete one again. Here's why, and the three-call API path (get a token, list, delete) that clears it out.

vcfvmwarevlcm
16 June 2026

The Trust Ladder: An Automation Framework from an Old Network Hand

How much to automate a process and when to hold back — automation as a promotion you earn, not a switch you flip.

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31 May 2026

Increasing Velocity - Refresh and updates

There is a a lot of reasons to do things but security is a big motivater — I am on a refresh of the VCF guides, deeper salt integration and automation bits. This is the start.

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Multi-part walkthroughs, run end to end in the lab and maintained as the products move.

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Who writes this

I'm an infrastructure and network engineer and architect. This is where the working notes go: design decisions, platform engineering, homelab builds, and the automation that ties them together. Everything here started as something I had to figure out, then got cleaned up enough to be useful to someone else six months later.

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