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128GB memory mini PCs is now a reality with 64GB DDR5 SODIMM

02.19.2025 by William Lam // 12 Comments

The long awaited 64GB DDR5 SODIMM memory modules from Crucial was just released this week! 😁


I was so excited about the news, I quickly splurged on a pair of these brand new modules, which are currently priced at $364 USD on Amazon! πŸ˜…πŸ’°

[Read more...]

Categories // ESXi, Home Lab, VMware Cloud Foundation Tags // DDR5, SODIMM

Quick Tip - Auditing ESXi boot firmware type

02.10.2025 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

I had a customer that recently reached out asking how they could easily audit their entire ESXi infrastructure to determine which hosts was still booting using the legacy BIOS firmware, which has been deprecated and will be removed in a future vSphere release, in favor of the industry standard UEFI firmware type.

In vSphere 8.0 Update 2, a new vSphere API property called firmwareType was introduced and added to the ESXi Hardware BIOS info object that makes it very simple to retrieve with the following PowerCLI 1-Liner:

(Get-VMHost).ExtensionData.Hardware.BiosInfo

Here is an example output for an ESXi host booting with UEFI firmware:


Here is an example output for an ESXi host booting with BIOS firmware:


Since this vSphere API property was recently introduced in vSphere 8.0 Update 2, if you attempt to use this on an ESXi host that is not running 8.0 Update 2, then you will see the field being blank if you are using a newer release of PowerCLI that understands this new property or it will simply not show if you are using an older version of PowerCLI.


Alternatively, if you still need to retrieve this information, you can go directly to ESXi host via SSH, not ideal but you can use the following VSISH command to retrieve this exact information:

vsish -e get /hardware/firmwareType

Categories // Automation, ESXi, PowerCLI Tags // bios, ESXi, firmware, UEFI

Easier method to simulate custom ESXi SMBIOS hardware strings

01.06.2025 by William Lam // 2 Comments

Happy 2025! πŸŽ‰ 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!

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, ESXi, Nested Virtualization Tags // Nested ESXi, SMBIOS

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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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Recent

  • Programmatically accessing the Broadcom Compatibility Guide (BCG) 05/06/2025
  • Quick Tip - Validating Broadcom Download TokenΒ  05/01/2025
  • Supported chipsets for the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi Fling 04/23/2025
  • vCenter Identity Federation with Authelia 04/16/2025
  • vCenter Server Identity Federation with Kanidm 04/10/2025

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