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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.

Simplified Nested ESXi installation in ESXi 7.0 Update 2 using HTTP Boot over VirtualEFI

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Deploying an ESXi scripted installation aka Kickstart running within a VM (Nested ESXi) has a number of benefits, especially for testing and development purposes. This was something I did regularly as a customer, especially with new releases of ESXi to ensure our existing automation scripts and processes continued to work before rolling out into production. ESXi kickstart itself is pretty straight forward, but the required supporting infrastructure (PXE Server, DHCP, TFTP, etc) that needs to be configured, especially for a greenfield deployment can often be challenging for new comers.

Even with an existing PXE infrastructure, it can often be difficult to configure or troubleshoot depending on your level of access which does not add any value in actually testing or automating the ESXi scripted installation process. In ESXi 7.0 Update 2, an enhancement was made to the Virtual Machine's UEFI firmware called VirtualEFI that would enable ESXi to perform an HTTP Boot given the ESXi bootloader URL and without requiring any of the traditional PXE infrastructure.

To take advantage of this new capability, you just need to have a physical server running ESXi 7.0 Update 2 and a VM that is configured with the latest vHW19 compatibility. To configure HTTP boot, you will need to add the following two VM Advanced Settings:

  • networkBootProtocol - httpv4 or httpv6
  • networkBootUri - HTTP URL to the ESXi bootloader (bootx64.efi)

Disclaimer: Nested ESXi and Nested Virtualization is not officially supported by VMware

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