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Benefits of VM Templates (VMTX) in vSphere Content Library

05.16.2023 by William Lam // 13 Comments

A commonly miss-understood capability of the vSphere Content Library is managing and distributing Virtual Machine Templates (VMTX), which was introduced in vSphere 6.7 Update 2.

When vSphere Content Library was first released in vSphere 5.0, content was distributed by using a pull-based replication where the subscriber vCenter Server would setup initiate the content subscription to the publisher vCenter Server and then content would then be downloaded to the subscriber vCenter Server as shown in the diagram below.


This initial architecture of vSphere Content Library made it extremely easy for any vCenter Server, regardless of their vCenter Single Sign-On domain, to create a subscription and download content (ISO, OVF/OVA and other files) from the vSphere Content Library of the publisher vCenter Server.

The creation of the vSphere Content Library subscription was managed completely by the individual subscribing vCenter Server as long as it knew the subscription URL and any credentials that may have been configured and of course connectivity to the publisher vCenter Server. While this made it easy for anyone to subscribe content from a vSphere Content Library, it also meant for larger organizations with many vCenter Server(s), an additional task was required to configure each subscribing vCenter Server.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, vSphere 7.0, vSphere 8.0 Tags // content library, vmtx

Quick Tip - Preserving MachineGUID in Windows using vCenter Converter

05.15.2023 by William Lam // 13 Comments

When using the popular vCenter Converter tool for performing a Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) or Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) migration of Microsoft Windows, the MachineGuid (HKLM->SOFTWARE->Microsoft->Cryptography->MachineGuid) can change based on your migration settings.


By default, the Reconfigure destination virtual machine option is selected to help ensure the converted virtual machine will properly start in the destination environment as outlined in the vCenter Converter documentation.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, vSphere Tags // MachineGUID, vCenter Converter

Inventory standalone ESXi host core count for vSphere+

05.04.2023 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

To help customers inventory their existing vSphere and vSAN CPU core usage for the vSphere+ and vSAN+ Cloud Service, you can take advantage of this inventory script HERE that I have created and generates a report (including CSV) by connecting to your existing vCenter Server(s) for analysis.

While the majority of our customers use vCenter Server to manage their ESXi host(s), we do have customers that run standalone ESXi hosts for various reasons. Recently, I had a few inquires on how customers could inventory their standalone ESXi hosts as they plan to transition those standalone ESXi hosts into the vSphere+ Cloud Service?

The benefit of using the vSphere API in creating the initial script is that the exact same API model also applies to a standalone ESXi host, so the core logic was there but a small modification of the script was required as we now have individual ESXi hosts that we need to connect and inventory. In addition, I also wanted to make the user experience as easy as possible to run the script and require as little input as possible.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, VMware Cloud, vSphere Tags // vSphere

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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