A few years back I had showed how you could create and host your own 3rd Party vSphere Content Library which allows customers to decouple their content from the underlying vSphere environment and centralizing their content and making it available to number of vCenter Servers by simply just having an HTTP(s) endpoint. The other huge benefit is being able to take advantage of the existing web content tools for optimizing delivery or retrieval whether that is replication, caching, etc. and not relying a single vCenter Server for providing Content Library publication. In addition to showing how to create your own content libraries, I also had built my own 3rd Party vSphere Content Library which contains a variety of my Nested ESXi Templates (empty VM shells) running on Amazon S3 which can be consumed by anyone as long as you are running vCenter Server 6.0 or newer.
Although the empty Nested ESXi Templates were quite useful for myself and customers, it would have also been nice to include my pre-built Nested ESXi Virtual Appliances which I had recently updated to support vSphere 6.0 Update 3 and vSphere 6.5d (vSAN 6.6). Thanks to Dana Nourie, who runs our wildly popular VMware Flings Program, was kind enough to help me with the content hosting and now anyone can also subscribe to my Nested ESXi VA's and automatically have the content sync down using the vSphere Content Library feature.
UPDATE 1 (07/31/17) - The Nested ESXi Content Library has been updated to include the latest ESXi 6.5 Update 1 VA. If you are already subscribing to the library, it should have already pulled down the content (or at least the metadata which you can then force synchronization) or you can simply subscribe to the library and have access to the latest ESXi VA.
UPDATE 2 (05/07/18) - The Nested ESXi Content Library has been updated to include the latest ESXi 6.5 Update 2 VA. If you are already subscribing to the library, it should have already pulled down the content (or at least the metadata which you can then force synchronization) or you can simply subscribe to the library and have access to the latest ESXi VA.
To get started, just create a new vSphere Content Library and enter the following subscription URL: https://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/lib.json
You can either download the content immediately or only when you need to use it. I recommend the former since its only two images which totals up to a whopping 1GB 😉
Once the creation of the Content Library has been completed, you should see the following two Nested ESXi VAs in the library which are now ready for deployment!
For more information about the Nested ESXi 6.0u3/6.5d VA's and how they work, please have a look at this blog post here. For more information about the Nested ESXi Templates and how to subscribe to the 3rd Party vSphere Content Library, please have a look at this blog post here.
Hi Wiliam, I noticed you are using TinyPhotonVM in your lab. I assume that is what I am looking for - small VM with preinstalled OS and vmware tools for lab testing, super easy to configure. Can you publish it (via Content Library) and describe it just a little?
thank you in advance RoS
I know I am missing it but I am trying to login to the 6.7v1 host and just cannot seem to get the right username and password to login.
Can someone point me in the right direction?
I have been through the scripts and everything else I could find the right combo.
Thank you so much in advance
sorry. I mean could not find the right combo
Hi William, I'm trying to use one of your PowerCLI scripts to deploy a nested ESXi vSAN environment and I want to update it to use v6.7u1 ESXi version. The problem I'm having is that when I export the Nested_ESXi6.7u1_Appliance_Template_v1 from the shared content library the Get-OvfConfiguration cmdlet thinks the OVF section is invalid. Also, the export doesn't produce the .mf file, but I was able to create that using openssl. I've tried creating the OVA file with tar on my Mac OS system and later with ovftool. Both produce an OVA that fails to be recognized by the cmdlet. Any ideas? Or can you provide a download link for a working OVA of the ESXi6.7u1 file? Thanks!
I found the link to the 6.7u1 OVA.. thanks.
While I have your attention.. I've run into another weird problem with the automation script and what's failing used to work just fine. I'm getting a failure at the point where New-VsanDiskGroup is called. The script is complaining that there's no implementation for a method called UpdateVsanDiskFormatVersion. I'm using what I think is the latest PowerCLI and PowerNSX versions.
Hi William, thanks for your great work.
I'm getting "HTTP request error: connect timed out" I presume https://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/lib.json is still up?
I think there were some issues over the weekend with the site, I'm able to reach the file. Can you please try again?
Hi, I've tried again and it's ok now. Thanks. Appreciated!
Can someone tell me the default root password for the ova?
VMware1! as the default but you can set the root password when you deploy 🙂
Thanks William. I'll start working on it right now.
I'm running the VMware PowerCLI 12.x.x.x and your script for the 6.7u3. I get a warning stating that Parameter 'VsanDiskClaimMode is Obsolete. What should this New-Cluster cmdlet be replaced with?
Thanks for the awesome templates!
Is there any way to pass ova configuration directly when deploying from the content-library?
My current process first exports the item, then does a Get-OvfConfiguration on the exported ova and then a deploy. It works but it's far from perfect 😉
Any suggestions how to bypass the export?
Hey William,
It looks like the VMware server is currently offline, possibly as part of Day 2? https://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/lib.json is returning a 522 error.
Hopefully it comes back. It's been a fantastic resource to have on hand over the years!
Sadly, that’s one of the things that won’t be coming back post-day 2. I’ll still have appliances hosted on Fings site at later date, but no CL