WilliamLam.com

Customizing SMBIOS strings (hardware manufacturer and vendor) for Nested ESXi 

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Nested ESXi continues to be an invaluable resource that I use on almost a daily basis from solution prototyping, customer reproduction to automated lab deployments supporting both VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF), the use cases are simply endless!

While you can do almost anything with Nested ESXi, mimicking or simulating specific hardware strings such as the manufacturer or vendor is not really possible or at least very easily. I was recently reminded of this topic again as this has been something I wanted to look into but just not had the time. In fact, some of this was inspired by a conversation I had with fellow colleague Luke Huckaba who found a clever trick playing with the default Virtual Machine boot ROMs which are shipped with both ESXi and our VMware Desktop Hypervisors (Workstation/Fusion).

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ESXi on Protectli Vault Pro 6650/6670

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I always love hearing about new and interesting hardware vendors from our VMware community, which is exactly how I came to learn about Protectli back in 2021 from fellow vExpert Trevor Smith. It was in 2021 where Trevor had shared with the vExpert Community that Protectli was developing a 10GbE hardware kit, which was really interesting since there was not many options for small form factor systems at that time that included 10GbE connectivity.

After following up with Protectcli in 2021, they confirmed a 10GbE kit was in the works but it was still in early design and development, so there was nothing to evaluate at the time. Fast forward to April 2024, I received a follow-up email asking if I would be interested in kicking the tires on their first 10GbE kits with their new Protectli Vault Pro 6600 series.


So here is your first look at the ESXi running on the new Protectli 10G Vault Pro!

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Nested ESXi Virtual Appliances are now back under VMware Flings Community!

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I know many of our internal teams (field, engineering, support, etc.), customers and partners have heavily relied on my Nested ESXi Virtual Appliances (VA) over the years which makes it seamless to deploy both VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) lab environments for learning, testing, troubleshooting, automation and development purposes. To support our customers in troubleshooting and prototyping purposes, I also make use of my Nested ESXi VAs on a regular basis and have found this to be invaluable in aiding my day to day work.

As part of the VMware by Broadcom "Day 2" transition, the hosting platform that housed my Nested ESXi downloads was no longer available and that impacted both the standalone Nested ESXi downloads but also the Nested ESXi Content Library, which provided a convenient way to subscribe to all the VAs from your vCenter Server.

Today, I excited to share that my Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance downloads are back and they are now available under the VMware Flings program! ?

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