development

Getting started with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK

There is a new API in town… naa, not really new, but the Microsoft Graph API will replace most, if not all, other Azure AD/ Microsoft 365 APIs. Actually, Microsoft has planned to retire Azure AD Graph API and ADAL in Juni 2022. Now they have postponed this date to somewhere after December 2022. This will give you some extra time to refactor your PowerShell scrips and move them to use the PowerShell SDK for Graph.

Mail notification for specific Active Directory security events

A customer used PRTG Network Monitor to notify him in case of account lockouts. This worked quite well until we implemented Admin Tiering. In order to get a mail notification in case of an account lockout, or other security-relevant events in Active Directory, I customized some scripts from my PowerShell dump. The solution is pretty simple: I used the Task Planner to run a PowerShell script if a specific event id occurs.

How to install Visual Studio Code on Linux Mint 18

I have wrote about the installation of PowerShell Core in Linux Mint 18 yesterday. Today, I want to show you, how to install Visual Studio Code on Linux Mint 18. The installation is really easy: Download the deb package Install the deb package Run Visual Studio Code You can download the latest packages for Windows, Linux (deb and rpm, if you want even a tar ball), and Mac on the Visual Studio Code download page.

How to install PowerShell Core on Linux Mint 18

Beside my Lenovo X250, which is my primary working machine, I’m using a HP ProBook 6450b. This was my primary working machine from 2010 until 2013. With a 128 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM and the Intel i5 M 450 CPU, it is still a pretty usable machine. I used it mainly during projects, when I needed a second laptop (or the PC Express card with the serial port…). It was running Windows 10, until I decided to try Linux MInt.

Monitoring hardware status with Python and vSphere API calls

Apparently it’s “how to monitor hardware status” week on vcloudnine.de. Some days ago, I wrote an article about using SNMP for hardware monitoring. You can also use the vSphere Web Client to get the status of the host hardware. A third way is through the vSphere API. I just want to share a short example how to use vSphere API calls and pyVmomi. pyVmomi is the Python SDK for the VMware vSphere API.

HPE StoreVirtual REST API

Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs are all the rage. REST was defined by Roy Thomas Fielding in his PhD dissertation “Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures". The architectural style of REST describes six constraints: Uniform interface Stateless Cacheable Client - Server communication Layered system Code on demand RESTful APIs typically use HTTP and HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.) to send data to, or retrieve data from remote systems.

First steps with Python and pyVmomi (vSphere SDK for Python)

In December 2013, VMware made an christmas gift to the community by releasing pyVmomi. pyVmomi is a SDK that allows you to manage VMware ESXi and vCenter using Python and the VMware vSphere API. Nearly 18 months are past since then and pyVmomi has developed over time. I’ve started to play around with Python, and I’ve written about the reasons in one of my last blog posts (Hey infrastructure guy, you should learn Python!

Hey infrastructure guy, you should learn Python!

I’m not a developer. I’m an infrastructure guy. All I ever needed was to write some scripts. Therefore, I never needed more than DOS batches, BASH/ CSH/ KSH, Visual Basic Script and nowadays PowerShell. So why should I learn another programming language? One to rule them all? I don’t think that there is a single programming language that is perfect for all use cases. The spread and acceptance of a language shows a positive correlation with the number of available frameworks, tools and libraries.