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Quick Tip: Selective ESX Host Patching in VCF 9.1

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Prior to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1, users could choose whether to apply an ESX update across all or a selected set of vSphere Clusters, but there was no additional granularity for selecting specific ESX hosts within a cluster. This has been a frequently requested capability, especially for excluding specific ESX hosts from an update or performing a controlled rollout across one or more vSphere Clusters.

Fleet Lifecycle Management in VCF 9.1 has been enhanced with a new custom host selection capability that allows users to select specific ESX hosts within a vSphere Cluster for patching.

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Playing with Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) in vSphere 9.1 using an ASUS NUC

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Introduced in VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) is the next evolution of Auto Deploy. Like Auto Deploy, it automates both ESX installation and host configuration. Instead of relying on the traditional PXE/TFTP boot process and Host Profiles, ZTP uses modern UEFI HTTP Boot along with vSphere Configuration Profiles (VCP) to provision a fully configured ESX host that automatically registers itself into the desired vSphere Cluster.

While ESX has supported UEFI HTTP Boot for some time, adoption has been gradual as organizations continue to rely on existing PXE/TFTP-based deployment infrastructure. At the same time, the hardware ecosystem has steadily transitioned from legacy BIOS firmware to UEFI, making UEFI HTTP Boot more broadly available. Auto Deploy's iPXE implementation was a nice bridge to support traditional PXE/TFTP infrastructure while still getting the benefits of HTTP boot, especially when it comes to installing ESX over the network compared to a TFTP-based approach.

While cleaning out some old lab hardware, I came across a spare ASUS NUC 15 Pro that I was no longer using and wondered whether it supported UEFI HTTP Boot and could be repurposed for ZTP testing? 🤔

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Quick Tip: Automating ESX System Resource Pool Workaround Prior to 8.0 Update 3g

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For users running ESX 8.0 Update 3 releases prior to Update 3g, applying patches may result in a pre-check failure with a SHA-1 signature error due to memory exhaustion, as outlined in KB 433124. The knowledge base article also describes a resolution that involves increasing the memory limit for one of the ESX system resource pools by using localcli.

Since localcli is the local version of ESXCLI, the command must be executed directly on the ESX host, typically requiring SSH access. An alternative approach is to use the vSphere API, which exposes the ESX system resource pool configuration, which means we can use tools like PowerCLI. This allows the same workaround to be applied remotely without requiring SSH or direct access to the ESX host.

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