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Quick Tip - New method to mark HDD to SSD in ESXi 7.x and 8.x using ESXCLI

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I recently helped a colleague who wanted to mark an HDD device in ESXi to show up as an SSD, which may be needed if the storage device was not correctly detected or if you are using Nested ESXi and the underlying storage is not an SSD and you need to mark it as an SSD for use with vSAN OSA or ESA.

The easiest way to accomplish this operation is by using the vSphere UI, but that does require vCenter Server to be up and running, which it was not. Alternatively, you can also perform this operation using ESXCLI and configure an Storage Array-Type Plugin (SATP) claim rules, which had been possible since 2013 but it looks like the old method no longer works in the latest ESXi 7.x and 8.x releases.

Note: If you are configuring this for a Nested ESXi VM, another method is to emulate a virtual SSD as shown in this blog post.

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Automating counting cores & TiBs for new VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) SKUs

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Happy New Year! 🥳🎉🥂

At the end of 2023, we announced two new offerings called VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) that drastically simplifies our overall vSphere-based portfolio and licensing model.

To help our users understand the new licensing model which uses both CPU cores and TiB (for vSAN storage sizing), I have created a PowerCLI function (Get-FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage) that will inventory your existing vSphere environment and provide a detailed report on the number of CPU Core and/or TiB license count that would be required whether you are considering the VVF or VCF offering.


For those familiar with my previous versions of the vSphere and vSphere+ core counting scripts, this function works in a very similar manner with the output configurable using either console or outputting it to an excel spreadsheet for further processing. For more details on the calculations, where to download and how to use the PowerCLI function, please see VMware KB 95927.