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Quick Tip - Block or remove download URL for VMware Enhanced Authentication Plug-in (EAP)

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There was a new VMware Security Advisory (VMSA-2024-0003) that was published this week that affects the deprecated VMware Enhanced Authentication Plug-in (EAP) and as part of the remediation, per VMware KB 96442, there are instructions on how to uninstall the EAP plugin from desktop systems that had it installed.

I also noticed there were also questions from the community about disabling the EAP download itself, which is available as a hyperlink from the vSphere UI login page as shown in the screenshot below.


Having spent some time exploring and customizing the vSphere UI login page back in 2015, I knew there were a few ways of either blocking and/or removing the download URL all together, so I figure I would put together the list of options depending on what users were comfortable with.

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ESXi on Minisforum MS-01

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In recent years, there have been a number of new players that have entered the mini PC market that have really been pushing the boundaries on small form factor systems. Minisforum is one such company, that was founded in 2018 and have been steadily producing more interesting kits to compete with some of the more established vendors in this space.

Early on, the kits from Minisforum were pretty comparable (compute, network and storage capabilities) with other vendors using the popular 4x4 design, pioneered by Intel with their Intel NUC platform. With each new generation of mini PCs from Minisforum, the chassis aesthetics started to become more unique and they started to have more differentiated offerings like broader CPU choices including some of the latest AMD desktop and mobile processors.

Even I was intrigued by some of Minisforum offers from a VMware perspective, but unfortunately Minisforum had no interest in collaborating when I had reached out a while back. Over the years, I stayed informed of new releases from Minisforum but nothing really stood out to me as much as their recent announcement of the Minisforums Workstation MS-01.


UPDATE (03/05/2024) - SimplyNUC has just launched the Onyx Pro, which is nothing more than a rebrand of the Minisforums MS-01 and review here would also apply to SimplyNUC OnyxPro.

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Automate the deployment & initial configuration of Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager (formally vRSLCM) 

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I love writing automation, especially for deploying a consistent and repeatable environment for testing or learning purposes. I recently deployed the latest Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.14 (formally vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager or vRSLCM) manually using the graphical Easy Installer method, which was easy and straight forward.

Unlike the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) installer, which includes both a UI and CLI option, the latter for automation purposes. I found that ASLCM only provides an interactive UI method for deployment and I was interested in an automated solution. Similar to the VCSA installer, the extracted contents of the ASLCM ISO is the installer and OVA image, so I figured I could just deploy using PowerCLI and I could start playing with ASLCM!

Automating the ASLCM OVA deployment was trivial, but what I discovered was that there was different behavior between using the Easy Installer versus just deploying the OVA and powering it on. I observed that I was not able to login using the password that I had set in the OVF properties for the admin@local user ...

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