# Meeting Notes VEBA Community Call

Occurs every **last Tuesday** in the month at **8AM Pacific Time**

**Zoom:** https://via.vmw.com/veba-ama (password protected, [details](https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance#community-calls))
**Notes**: https://via.vmw.com/veba-notes
**Recordings:** https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnopqt07fPn3hspeQvarWuFH3IiwkMpDJ

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## May 31st 2022

### Recording

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNPT56SQxDI&ab_channel=VMware%7Bcode%7D

### Agenda

- `v0.7.3` remaining milestone [issues](https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance/milestone/11)
- Kubecon Talk vSphere and Kubernetes with VEBA
- https://github.com/embano1/kubeconeu22
- Open Discussion

### Notes

- [DBibby] asking around simplifying the VEBA setup scripts, especially the variable handling in [`setup.sh`](https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance/blob/ee7b8a95a519b713c5ba3d8070e365cc6931c59f/files/setup.sh)
- [William] gave background on why we have to do this and how it evolved over time as the complexity of the appliance increased
- [DBibby] `getOvfProperty could generate all this, but with unit tests instead of deploying the appliance to reduce feedback cycle

## April 26th 2022

### Recording

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNAvbhUWOS4

### Agenda

- `v0.7.3` Milestone (remaining [issues](https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance/milestone/11))
- Draft PR [`HorizonSouce`](https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/sources-for-knative/pull/416) for Knative
- Kubecon Talk vSphere and Kubernetes with VEBA
- Open Discussion

### Notes

- [AaronM] add option in-place upgrades/options for minor VEBA patch releases?
- time-consuming parts mostly around custom settings, secrets, network access, certificates
- [William] Complex task (incl. testing) for a Fling, even just for minor releases (sometimes we bump/switch components and versions)
- [RobertG] +1 on vSphere HA function Patrick ported to Knative backend
- [ScottR] working on a "VEBA" Carvel package for router, RMQ and Knative (using self-developed Helm to Carvel tool)
- [ToddK] use case: application teams want information, e.g. VM migrations, for performance reasons ("vMotion causes latencies") but should not have access to VC
- idea: use VEBA function and store important events in a DB for async inspection/troubleshooting
- [Michael] simple solution: print event to stdout and use VEBA syslog/LogInsight integration
- [Michael] should we do a VEBA Function prototyping (learning) session in one of the next VEBA calls?

### TODOs

- [ ] Ask in Slack channel for VEBA function session - @RwSaGG9uThu0OYdnSCtczg (Michael)

## March 29th 2022

### Recording

- https://youtu.be/m0dTmk4Z8O0

### Agenda

- Upcoming `v0.7.3` hotfix release
- Review open issues
- Open discussion

### Notes

- [AaronM] also blocked by private Harbor/cert issue:
- https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance/issues/818
- [William] WIP (docs, post-deployment)
- [AaronM] authenticating against container registry
- [Michael] see: https://knative.dev/docs/serving/deploying-from-private-registry/
- [Michael] anyone noticed performance improvements w/ v0.7.2 and RabbitMQ?
- [Aaron] blocked by private registry issue, but will try soon
- [Darryl] CarbonBlack function WIP, questions on git
- [Michael] see: https://www.mgasch.com/2021/05/git-basics/
- [AaronM] is it an anti-pattern to simplify/consolidate function logic, e.g. for supporting different REST APIs?
- background: would simplify deployment/distribution instead of smaller/API-specific functions for Aaron
- [Michael] would consider this anti-pattern, though in certain cases might just work
- [Michael] older example from PK for inspiration: https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance/tree/release-0.6.0/examples/openfaas/python/invoke-rest-api (not available for Knative processor)
- [Darryl] buildpacks heavily simplified dev workflow https://buildpacks.io/
- https://github.com/paketo-buildpacks/dotnet-core/issues/653
- also: https://github.com/knative-sandbox/kn-plugin-func to boostrap functions
- [William] no PS/PCLI support for buildpacks (on Photon) yet
- https://github.com/paketo-buildpacks/dotnet-core/issues/653
- [AaronM] question on deprecation of VEBA on "existing Knative" in v0.7.2
- [William] just deprecated as part of the appliance deployment; can still be done manually though
- [William] with v0.8.0 it will be a no-code change required migration from VEBA OSS to Knative commercial offering, e.g. Tanzu TAP
- [AaronM] testing Knative against other K8s distributions?
- [William] official guidance for (production) deployment https://knative.dev/docs/install/knative-offerings/

### TODOs

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## March 1st 2022

### Recording

- https://youtu.be/gBKael9HG14

### Agenda

- The next release will be v0.7.2 (v0.8.0 is tentatively scheduled for end of first half ’22)
- Notable changes with the next release
- Community discussion

### Notes

- v0.7.2 pre-release ready for testing (was planned as v0.8.0)
- Internal refactoring for stability/performance and bug fixes
- Major documentation update (Function contributions)
- PS Function [Template](https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance/tree/development/examples/knative/powercli/kn-pcli-template) for contributors
- Download: https://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/veba/VMware_Event_Broker_Appliance_release-0.7.2.ova
- Next community call: Mar 29th
- New Sources for Knative v0.8 ("router" feature parity)
- v0.8 ETA Q2
- Patrick working on new tutorial/guidance video for function authors
- Ankush experienced issues with Kubelet in <0.7.2 (Kubelet not starting after reboot)
- resolved with v0.7.2
- Ankush wrote function for a customer (Python) to send power off event to Slack

### TODOs

-

## January 25th 2022

### Recording

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVWRAHAru30&list=PLnopqt07fPn3hspeQvarWuFH3IiwkMpDJ&index=3

### Agenda

- Welcome new members!
- Update on upcoming v0.8.0 release
- vCenter EventHistoryCollector bug
- Idea/Prototype: vSphere Event Streaming

### Notes

- Question from Avri:
- Any plans to improve the UI, e.g. events viewer?
- How to automate creating functions (like UI plugin does)?
- Question from James: how to prevent people from randomly joining/disrupting VEBA call
- v0.8.0 updates:
- Broker enhancements, e.g. parallel processing and at-least-once semantics
- Avri: function-autoscaling desired vs trigger concurrency annotation (state management, ease code logic [i.e. lambda behavior] to avoid concurrency issues)
- Version upgrades, incl. switch to containerd (fixes fluent-bit bug)
- Reminder: AWS and OpenFaaS processors removed in appliance
- Tracker: https://github.com/orgs/vmware-samples/projects/1/views/6
- vCenter EventHistoryCollector bug
- Avri was the third VEBA user to report "no new events" issue
- found root cause: vCenter DB int32 overflow
- currently working w/ engineering on short/long-term fix
- vSphere Event Streaming:
- Motivation: expose vSphere Events SOAP API via HTTP/REST streaming API
- Try it! https://github.com/embano1/vsphere-event-streaming
- Demo

### TODOs

- [x] Create issue for EHC bug on GH - @RwSaGG9uThu0OYdnSCtczg (Michael)
- [ ] Create issue for EHC bug on Fling - @lamw

## December 28th 2021

No meeting (holidays)

## November 30th 2021

### Recording

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI63m9tBDgA&list=PLnopqt07fPn3hspeQvarWuFH3IiwkMpDJ&index=2

### Agenda

- Update next releases - Michael
- Demo of vROPS integration - Robert

### Notes

- Releases:
- Features and fixes in v0.7.1
- New functions and rewamped docs on the website
- Discussing removal of OpenFaaS and Eventbridge processors in the appliance deployment form factor in v0.8.0 (remains available in the VMware Event Router for some time)
- Updates to RabbitMQ broker (performance and stability)
- Metrics and build optimizations
- Working towards using Knative-native event sources (VSphereSource) to replace the custom VMware Event Router
- No VEBA community call during X-Mas Holidays
- Next meeting: Jan 25th 2022 8AM PT

### TODOs

- [ ]

## October 26th 2021

### Recording

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI7SgWwrj5Y&list=PLnopqt07fPn3hspeQvarWuFH3IiwkMpDJ&index=1

### Agenda

- Intro about this first community call
- VEBA @VMworld recap (v0.7 release, sessions, etc.)
- VEBA v0.8 feature discussion
- Metrics support: one or multiple per deployment (TO, Prometheus, more?)
- User feedback(names) on VEBA website - volunteers?
- New Community Use Cases
- https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance/blob/development/USECASES.md
- VEBA @Hacktoberfest?
- Details: https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/
- Demo vSphere Preemption

### Notes

- VMworld Code Session VEBA Part 3 on Youtube
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwgJpZM68mA&list=PLnopqt07fPn3KFBr7fukvXhzo6i3Ir60z&index=11
- VEBA Public Roadmap
- https://github.com/vmware-samples/vcenter-event-broker-appliance/projects/1
- Plan to attend Hacktoberfest in 2022
- Question from James on multi-VC integration
- VEBA and VMware event router is one-to-one
- VEBA can be customized to run multiple router instances (e.g. use Helm chart to automate)
- Or directly deploy VMware event router (or Knative vSphere Sources) on Kubernetes
- https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/sources-for-knative
- Aaron asking for consuming VEBA events, e.g. from underlying K8s stack
- Options:
- https://knative.dev/docs/developer/eventing/sources/apiserversource/reference/#example-resources-parameter
- Monitoring (see EPIC WIP above)
- Custom function/CronJob generating monitoring events
- Should VEBA generate custom events/alerts, e.g. VC disconnect
- Issue caused by VC down (maintenance) where router could not reconnect but DRS licensing must be enforced (audited)
- Checkpointing can be configured in VEBA so VEBA will replay events from before the crash (last checkpoint)
- List of all Knative Event Sources (can be manually deployed in VEBA)
- https://knative.dev/docs/developer/eventing/sources/
- Sidney question on AppVolume integration/support
- use-case for example about failed mounting on VM's and AppStack replication failures
- Sidney question on Horizon provider seeing lots of login/logout events
- Caused by another Fling heavily connecting (polling), should be optimized in Fling (use tokens)
- Workarounds:
- Filter on specific event in Sockeye event viewer
- Filter in custom function and drop these particular REST events
- Future: Knative filtering will improve which should make this more easy (w/out writing custom function logic)
- Question from James whether using router or VSphereSources if deploying directly on Kubernetes
- Recommendation: use VSphereSource and optionally run router in parallel to get features like Webhook and Horizon event provider

### TODOs

- [ ]