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Updated Nested ESXi Appliances for 7.0 Update 1d & 2a

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I have just updated my Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance collection to include support for the latest ESXi 7.0 Update 1d and 7.0 Update 2a releases. This took a bit longer than usual due to a busy schedule but also due to some fixes and enhancements that I had been working on. For those interested, you can find the detailed change log below and these updates are only applicable for these two OVAs or newer going forward.

Downloads:

Changes

  • Fixed self-sign TLS certificate generation (Subject Alternative Name now matches the provided FQDN)
  • Updated NTP settings to use ESXCLI for configuration (previously updating ntp.conf)
  • Suppressed Core Dump warning (/UserVars/SuppressCoredumpWarning)
  • Updated ESXi installation VMDK from 4 to 12GB to support ESX-OS Data & VMFS Volume
  • Automatically configure ESX-OS Data & 4GB VMFS volume
  • Disabled Follow Hardware MAC by default (/Net/FollowHardwareMac)
  • Follow Hardware MAC can now be configured using OVF property guestinfo.followmac
  • Automatically recreate vmk0 interface to ensure unique MAC Address from vmnic0
  • Automatically configure vMotion traffic on vmk0

For previous Nested ESXi Appliance OVAs and/or the Nested ESXi Content Library, please take a look at http://vmwa.re/nestedesxi

Rocky Linux RC1 on ESXi-x86 & ESXi-Arm

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This morning, I saw that Rocky Linux RC1 was now available and includes support for both x86 and AARCH64 (Arm) and I wanted to give it a quick spin on both ESXi-x86 and ESXi-Arm.

ESXi-x86

I was succesful in installing Rocky Linux on ESXi-x86 using the CentOS GuestOS type and using the defaults. You will however need to disable Secure Boot (VM Options->Boot Options) as it is currently not supported.


If you do not, you will see the following error message when booting up the ISO: Verification failed: (0x1A) Security Violation


The default network adapter for this GOS in ESXi-x86 is using VMXNET3 and it was automatically detected. If you forgot to enable networking during the configuration wizard (like I did), you will need to login and edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ens* and change enable=yes and reboot for the changes to go into effect.


VMware Tools can be installed by running the following commands:

yum -y install open-vm-tools
systemctl enable vmtoolsd
systemctl start vmtoolsd

ESXi-Arm

I was succesful in installing Rocky Linux on ESXi-Arm using the CentOS GuestOS type and using the defaults. Networking for ESXi-Arm is using e1000e and if you forgot to enable networking during the configuration wizard (like I did), you will need to login and edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ens* and change enable=yes and reboot for the changes to go into effect.

Unlike Rocky Linux for x86, there is currently not a VMware Tools package that can be installed using yum and my attempts at compiling VMware Tools lead to missing packages that are currently not available in their repository. I have already filed an issue on the VMware Tools Github repo for tracking purposes.