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Retrieving CPU Microcode revision from ESXi in vSphere 8.0 Update 3

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Whether you are applying a CPU microcode update through a hardware vendor's BIOS update or an ESXi update/upgrade, verifying the CPU microcode revision within ESXi is not as easy as it could be.

Today, if you wanted to get the current CPU microcode revision from ESXi, you would need to enable SSH and then use the vsish interface to retrieve this information by running the following command:

vsish -e cat /hardware/cpu/cpuList/0 | grep "microcode" -A2

While you can retrieve the CPU microcode revision, the method and required interfaces was less than ideal, especially at scale. Given ESXi already exposes a number CPU attributes via the ESXCLI interface, which includes programmatic access when using PowerCLI, I thought it would be a nice feature to also include the CPU microcode revision as part of the output and had filed an internal feature enhancement a few years back.

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Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance & USB Network Native Driver for ESXi for vSphere 8.0 Update 3

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With the release of vSphere 8.0 Update 3 now generally available (release notes and direct download links below):

I know the first question I will get (which I already have already :P) is what about updated versions of the Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance and USB Network Native Driver for ESXi? 😅

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Decoding vSphere (vCenter/ESXi), vSAN & Tanzu License Keys

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For most users, you probably have a large collection of vSphere license keys that have been provisioned over the years and keeping track of the product SKU, entitled features and capacity can be a challenge, especially if you are just looking at the raw 25 character license string.

While the Broadcom Support Portal (BSP) is recommended for all license management operations(view, split, merge, etc), did you know you could also use vCenter Server to help decode a particular license key?

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