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How to change hardware serial number for Mac OS X Guest?

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There was an interesting question that was asked the other day about changing the hardware serial number for an Apple Mac OS X guest as the generated serial number is not compatible with services such as Apple Caching Service or iMessage. I recall seeing this question get asked awhile back, but I could not immediately find the answer but thanks to Darius Davis (VMware Engineer) who provided the quick answer.

We have a facility to generate a "short" serial number which should be suitable for recent Apple software.  The option is enabled by default for OS X 10.9 guests.  To enable it for earlier guest OS versions, you'll need to power off your virtual machine and edit its configuration to add the following option:

SMBIOS.use12CharSerialNumber = "TRUE"

As mentioned by Darius, if you are running Mac OS X VM prior to 10.9 (Mavericks) you will need to add the following advanced VM setting by first powering it off and then add the above setting. There are two recommended ways of performing this change using either the vSphere C# Client or vSphere Web Client and instructions are listed below.

Note: Though you can also edit the VMX configuration file by hand, for those that are not familiar on how to reload the configuration file, it is best you use the UI.

vSphere C# Client:
Edit Settings -> VM Options -> Advanced -> Edit Configurations

vSphere Web Client:
Edit Settings -> Options -> Advanced -> General -> Configuration Parameters

Once you have added the advanced setting, you can now power back on your Mac OS X VM and when you click on the "About this Mac" option on the upper left hand side of the Apple icon you should see the Mac OS X version string. Click on the version string twice and you should now see the serial number that is generated which should not be longer than 12 characters.

As of writing this article the latest Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) is not yet officially on the VMware HCL for latest release of ESXi 5.5 as the OS just came out recently, however it is still possible to create the a Mac OS X 10.9 guest using the new vSphere Web Client. Be sure to keep your eyes on the VMware HCL for support of Mac OS X 10.9 on ESXi 5.5 here.

How to change the default HTML5 VM console port in vSphere 5.5?

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A couple of weeks back I wrote an article on how to generate a pre-authenticated HTML5 VM console link in vSphere 5.5 which allows a user to access the new HTML5 VM console from any operating system including Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. In the article I also provided a script to automatically generate the HTML5 VM console URL given a VM name which looks something like the following:

http://reflex.primp-industries.com:7331/console/?vmId=vm-23&vmName=VCSA&host=reflex.primp-industries.com&sessionTicket=cst-VCT-5254c455-4340-2185-e149-01ce44b146e1--tp-4A-88-17-7C-F5-D0-79-E6-9D-A1-E3-83-97-52-97-EA-E5-D3-D8-07&thumbprint=4A:88:17:7C:F5:D0:79:E6:9D:A1:E3:83:97:52:97:EA:E5:D3:D8:07

If you have tried out the new HTML5 VM console which is enabled only for a Mac OS X system using the new vSphere Web Client 5.5, you may have noticed it opens up a connection on port 7331 by default. However, this port is actually dynamic and could change if the underlying operating system hosting the vSphere Web Client is already in use. If you are running on the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance), there is a good chance that this will be the default port but for a Windows based installation, that may or may not be the case.

If you wish to find out what the default port is, you can take a look at the vSphere Web Client log file and search for the keyword "Djetty.port". On the VCSA, the log is located in /var/log/vmware/vsphere-client/logs/vsphere_client_virgo.log and here is a screenshot of what that looks like:

To change the default port, you will need to edit the vSphere Web Client configuration property file located in /var/lib/vmware/vsphere-client/webclient.properties for the VCSA and there is an equilvent for a Windows system as well. You will need to add the following entry:

html.console.port = PORT-NUMBER

Once you are done, you will need to save your changes and restart the vSphere Web Client service. On the VCSA, to restart the vSphere Web Client you will need to run the following command:

/etc/init.d/vsphere-client restart

Now if we go back to the vSphere Web Client and open the VM console on a Mac OS X system or generate a URL using the script, you should see the HTML5 VM console is now connecting to the new port.

VMworld Barcelona #NotSupported Tips/Tricks for vSphere 5.5 Slides Posted

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I hope everyone got back home quickly and safely from VMworld Barcelona (unlike myself for those of you who follow me on Twitter, took a bit longer than I had hoped). For those of you who attended my #NotSupported Tips/Tricks for vSphere 5.5 at VMworld Barcelona earlier in the week, I have posted my Sliderocket presentation below as well as the recording thanks to the vBrown Bag team. If you could not attend the session or did not go to VMworld you can view all vBrown Bag Tech Talk recordings by checking out this link here. I highly recommend you check out the ENTIRE presentation as there was an exciting announcement that I made at the VERY END of the presentation.

Disclaimer: I think it should be pretty obvious, but things discussed in the presentation is not officially supported by VMware. Use at your own risk.

I would like to thank everyone that attended my session, really enjoyed the crowd and the questions/discussions afterwards. I know you could have been else where such as the Solution Exchange with a nice beverage, so thank you all for attending and hopefully everyone enjoyed it. I would also like to give a big shout out to vBrown Bag team Jon Harris, Kyle Murray, Damian Karlson and Gregg Robertson for putting together such an awesome event up for the VMware community and for their assistance on quickly getting the AV all setup for my presentation.

Here is the presentation:

Here is the video recording:

Here is a couple of pictures from the audience: