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Quick Tip - Easily host VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Offline Depot using Python SimpleHTTPServer with Authentication

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In IT, you never know when you need to quickly spin up a web server for hosting files ... One of my favorite and super easy way to do this is by leveraging Python's SimpleHTTPServer which can immediately serve files within a directory with this 1-liner:

python -m http.server 9000

This certainly beats standing up a full blown web server if you just need GET and HEAD operations.

If you do not require authentication for serving your files, then this solution fits the bill perfectly! However, if you require authentication, then I typically resort to deploying a full blown web server and use .htaccess to manage users and passwords.

For customers that have a need to host a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) offline depot or any VMware-based offline depot, the solution will typically require a web server due to the authentication requirements. With that said, I have recently been using an alternative method, especially if you just need to quickly host some files for say an upgrade or deployment.

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vSAN ESA HCL hardware mock VIB for Nested ESXi

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Whether you are configuring vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) directly from vCenter Server or from VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), the underlying ESXi hardware is automatically validated against the vSAN ESA Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) to ensure that you are using supported vSAN hardware.

In the case of vCenter Server, you can simply ignore the HCL warnings and accept the risks and proceed with the configuration but when using VCF, the operation is blocked to ensure customers have a good experience when selecting vSAN ESA when deploying a VCF Management or Workload  Domain.


With that said, there is workaround where you can create your own custom vSAN ESA HCL JSON based on the hardware that you have and then upload that to either Cloud Builder for setting up a new VCF Management Domain or to SDDC Manager for deploying a new VCF Workload Domain, which I have blogged about HERE and HERE.

The use of Nested ESXi is a very popular way to deploy VCF, especially if you are new to solution and allows you to easily experiment and learn. More recently, I have noticed an uptick in the interests for deploying VCF with vSAN ESA and while you can certainly generate a custom vSAN ESA HCL as mentioned earlier, the process still requires some effort and in some situations the vSAN ESA HCL could get overwritten leading some frustration in debugging.

After helping some folks debug their VCF environments recently, I was thinking about a better experience and leveraging another technique that may not be very well known externally ...

UPDATE (02/03/25) - This solution can also be used for a physical ESXi deployment for use with vSAN ESA and VCF.

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Easier method to simulate custom ESXi SMBIOS hardware strings

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Happy 2025! 🎉 Here is a fun one to kick off the New Year ☺️

Last year, I demonstrated a method for customizing the SMBIOS hardware string using Nested ESXi, but the solution was not perfect and required hacking up a VM ROM file and it was also limited to using the BIOS firmware for your Nested ESXi VM as the behavior for EFI firmware was different.

I was doing some research towards the end of last year and I came across a much more elegant solution that works for both physical and virtual ESXi!

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