Happy Sunday! Before the wave of announcements starts rolling out from VMware Explore Las Vegas, which starts tomorrow, I wanted to share a quick update. 😅
I have been pretty swamped for the past couple of months, so it has taken a bit more time to get the latest Nested ESXi Virtual Appliances published, but here are the latest 8.0 Update 3 and 9.0 versions. I have included the direct links to the download but also the intermediate Broadcom Support Portal (BSP) links for those interested in bookmarking these pages.
Nested ESXi 8.x Virtual Appliance
Login to the BSP and navigate to My Downloads->Free Downloads->Flings->Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance
Nested ESXi 9.x Virtual Appliance
Login to the BSP and navigate to My Downloads->Flings->Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance
Note: ESXi 9.0 is only available as part of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) or VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) subscription, you will need an active VVF/VCF entitlement to download the Nested ESXi 9.x Virtual Appliance. For VMUG Advantage members who have obtained the new VCP-VCF certification, you will be entitled to the download.
VMware vSphere Foundation (VSP)
Should that be VVF?
yes, just corrected typo. Thank you
Thanks! I was starting to wonder if there were layer 8 problems holding the 9.0 version.
Thanks a lot William
For the 8.0C you will need to click on Free Downloads then ... flings ....
File Date is Dec 14th 2015 which I do find Funny
Is this available only for VMUG Advantage? We have actual VCF9 NFR licensing (as a partner) but I only see Nested ESXi through verison 8.
Anthony - Can you re-check to see if you're able to see the downloads now?
Seems to be a systematic issue for Nested ESX version 9?
For both, a valid NFR (partner) or with valid customer subscription for VCF, I can only see version 8 in Flings.
Are you able to share what SKU IDs you’ve got … haven’t had issue with others w/valid subs, so wondering if it’s another SKU
FYI we have SKU VCF-CLD-FND-5 for our VCF subscription valid through 10/2027. The full VCF 9 does appear to be an entitled download in our portal. We also do not see an available nested ESXi 9 download available.
Are you checking the right path, it’s NOT under Free section. The direct links are provided and I know folks with this exact VCF SKU who haven’t had any issues downloading
Yes, we've tried to find it under the Flings downloads alongside the ESX 8 nested hypervisors, and via the direct download link that includes subFamily=Flings&displayGroup=Nested%20ESXi%20Virtual%20Appliance&release=9.0.0.0.
When using the direct download link, after authentication it displays a 9.0.0.0 product family download page with "no data found" Primary Downloads for a second or two and then clears, leaving a blank screen aside from the header and menu bar to the left.
I'm wondering if our issues is perhaps due the fact that while we are a licensed VCF customer, we have yet to deploy our first VCF environment (we are still running traditional vCenter + ESX in our environment as we prepare to begin our VCF journey in the months ahead. As such, our VCF tenant portal doesn't have any registered environments yet and shows zero capacity used from our total available.
We are now able to download the ESXi 9 nested hypervisor using the link provided above. We engaged support yesterday and they found the issue (Flings was not entitled - now it is) and this should now be fixed for everyone.
John,
Glad to hear it!
Yes, support reached out to me yesterday and I was able to resolved it. The Fling was entitled for all the new SKUS, but I didn't realized there was another SKU (VCF-CLD-FND-5)! Thanks goodness for our SKU consolidation going forward 🙂
Hi William... with the ESXi v8.0.3g, its hardware version in the OVF it is (hardware version 20), but then I noticed that my vCLS nested VM's does not run... I haven't found the cause... I have to downgrade the ESXi VM to (hardware version 14), in order that ESXi VM, can run vCLS nested VM for its cluster... Am I missing something with the new hardware version?
I don't know why the blog is suppresing my text: "OperatingSystemSection ovf:id="104" ovf:version="65" vmw:osType="vmkernel65Guest"" (hardware version 20), and "OperatingSystemSection ovf:id="104" ovf:version="7" vmw:osType="vmkernel7Guest"" (hardware version 14), in which I have been talking about modify the OVF configuration of your ESXi OVA.
"
Sorry William... I think that I misunderstanding the problem... I think your OVF has a problem, maybe... OperatingSystemSection ovf:id="104" ovf:version="65" vmw:osType="vmkernel65Guest, means Guest OS Family=Other ant Guest OS Version="VMware ESXi 7.x" that I think it's not compatible with vmx-14 (ESXi 6.7 and later)... I have to upgrade the Nestet ESXi to vmx-21 (ESXi 8.0 U2 and later) in order to the other parameters be recognized..
I will respond to myself... extracting the OVA and modifying the ".ovf" file and changing the hardware version to "vmx-17" or later... Enough with be compatible with "ESXi 7 and later", that are the defaults in William Lam original ovf file (vmkernel65Guest), nested virtualization works again, and you can run vCLS nested VMs without problems.