ESXi on Arm, Ubuntu, WireGuard and some Veeam

Reading Time: 12 minutes

Like many others in the community I was very excited when I heard that ESXi on Arm is now general available. I heard about it first a few years back at VMworld, where a demo was shown. So, like many others I jumped to Amazon to get myself a Raspberry Pi 4 Kit. I opted to get the 8GB version, just in case.

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ITR aka IT Reality Podcast

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I talked to ITR aka IT Reality about the challenges of a small IT shop in the IT-Space. We touched on security, backups and building a team among other topics.

Vince does a great job moderating and talking to Jim is always a highlight. Check you the podcast here

VMUG Leader Summit 2020

Reading Time: 6 minutes

It’s been a few days since my return from VMUG Leader Summit 2020 in Palo Alto, CA and I’m still processing all the information and impressions. So, why not write a blog post about it, right? This was my first Summit to attend, and I can honestly say what a packed 72 hours it’s been. It started with an 8:15 am flight leaving Washington Dulles (lucky me the middle seat was empty) and landed in San Francisco around 11:20 am local time.

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Using Tags with Veeam

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Here at our little shop, I have been using Veeam for more than 5 years. It was already implemented when I got here, but I quickly decided to completely rebuild it from scratch and have been pretty happy with it. Of course, the build-out changes over time, as new features become available and/or requirements change.

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Google Chrome breaks Unifi Controller Guest Portal

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The other day after I updated my Google Pixel to Android 10 I noticed a weird error message when using our UniFi guest portal at work. After going to the portal, Chrome was complaining about an insecure certificate. We had updated our DigiCert certificate about 3 weeks ago, so this was going to be interesting to troubleshoot…

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Guest Blog Post on Wifi 6 and Cisco at Gestalt IT

Wifi 6
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After Cisco Live in San Diego and attending TechFieldDay Extra, I wrote a guest blog post for Gestalt IT covering Wifi 6 and Cisco Access Points.

Check it out here: https://gestaltit.com/author/nicostein/

I will be attending VMworld next week and am lucky to be on the panel for TechFieldDay again. The agenda is here, tune in to learn more.

Cisco Live 2019 and TechField Day in review

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Cisco Live 2019 now seems like a long time ago, but I thought it would be appropriate to write a little recap of my experience of this very special one.

Being my 7th Live, this was going to be a different one for me. The first time being a Cisco Champion and a Tech Field Delegate I knew this one was special. And special it was…

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TechField Day Delegate at Cisco Live TFDx

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Tech Field Day @ Cisco Live

So we are a few days out before Cisco Live 2019 in San Diego begins and needless to say I’m very excited. To add to my regular excitement is the fact that a) is my first time at Live as a Cisco Champion and b) I’m also a first time Tech Field Delegate for TDFx on Tuesday!

Tom Hollingsworth from GestaltIT reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to be a delegate. I had learned about the delegate program last year at VMworld and thought it was a very cool way to get community members and companies together to talk product and shop. It’s really a win-win for everybody, delegates get to learn about the latest tech and companies get a feeling if their product/tech makes sense in the industry.

I’m very stoked to meet the other delegates, some I have been following on twitter for a while and I can be sure there is going to be a lot of smart people in the room!

If you want to learn more about the delegate program click here.

Meet the delegate: Me

Thinking about becoming a delegate? Go here to apply

I’m sure to write a post about my experience shortly. Stay tuned!

Cisco Live 2019 in San Diego

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Cisco Live 2019

Throughout my career I have been fortunate enough to be able to go to Cisco Live numerous times. This year it will be my 7th time to go! Even after all those years I’m still very exited and it is one of my highlights of the year. Plus, this year is my first year to attend as a Cisco Champion, so I’m definitely excited about that!


Every year I learn something new about Cisco Live. One year it was all about Cisco Umbrella for me, which I rolled out a couple of months later at my job. Take note employers, there is tangible benefit to send your IT to Live!


Given we are only a few months out, here are my tips and tricks:

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VMware Alias Manager and Ticket Service (VGAuthService) fails after VMware Tools upgrade

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A little while back I upgraded our production cluster to a new ESXi version. The upgrade was smooth (as usual, knock on wood) and a new version of VMware Tools was to be deployed. No problem, done’ it many times. This time, there were about 10% of our workstations that were unable to update. I had set them to automatic update on reboot and had all our workstations rebooted overnight.

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