WilliamLam.com

  • About
    • About
    • Privacy
  • VMware Cloud Foundation
  • VKS
  • Homelab
    • Hardware Options
    • Hardware Reviews
    • Lab Deployment Scripts
    • Nested Virtualization
    • Homelab Podcasts
  • VMware Nostalgia
  • Apple

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

05.17.2021 by William Lam // 5 Comments

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:

  • Nested ESXi Appliance 7.0 Update 1d
  • Nested ESXi Appliance 7.0 Update 2a

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

Categories // ESXi, Nested Virtualization, vSphere 7.0 Tags // ESXi 7.0 Update 1d, ESXi 7.0 Update 2a, Nested ESXi

Exploring the new vSphere with Tanzu VM Service with Nested ESXi

05.05.2021 by William Lam // 3 Comments

After upgrading my homelab to the latest vSphere 7.0 Update 2a, I was looking forward to kicking the tires on the highly anticipated vSphere with Tanzu Virtual Machine Service capability. Both Oren Penso and Myles Gray have both done a fantastic job on their respective blogs here and here demo'ing the new VM Service.

While browsing through Oren's Github repo since I came across his blog post first, a couple of things quickly caught my attention. The first was a reference to OvfEnv transport with the YAML manifests and the second was that he was able to deploy an Ubuntu VM, which is interesting since only CentOS is currently officially supported. Why was this interesting? Well,ย with these two pieces of information, I had a pretty good theory on how the guest customizations were being passed into the GuestOS for configuration and this gave me an idea ๐Ÿค”

I decided to put my hypothesis to the test and try out the VM Service and deploy one of my Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance and as you can see from the tweet below, it worked! ๐Ÿคฏ

๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚

It freaking worked! Go @VMwareTanzu#NestedESXi pic.twitter.com/udTdwvLbgN

— William Lam (@lamw.bsky.social | @*protected email*) (@lamw) May 4, 2021

Disclaimer: vSphere with Tanzu and the VM Service currently only officially supports CentOS images for deployment, other operating systems are currently not supported. This is primarily for educational and experimentation purposes only. As of vSphere 8.x, you can now bring your own OVA/OVA for use with vSphere with Tanzu

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, Nested Virtualization, VMware Tanzu, vSphere 7.0 Tags // Nested ESXi, VM Service, vSphere Kubernetes Service

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

03.22.2021 by William Lam // 19 Comments

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.ย 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

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, ESXi, Nested Virtualization, vSphere 7.0 Tags // ESXi 7.0 Update 2, Nested ESXi, nested virtualization, UEFI, vSphere 7.0 Update 2

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • …
  • 26
  • Next Page »

Search

Thank Author

Author

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.

Connect

  • Bluesky
  • Email
  • GitHub
  • LinkedIn
  • Mastodon
  • Reddit
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo

Recent

  • Automating the vSAN Data Migration Pre-check using vSAN API 06/04/2025
  • VCF 9.0 Hardware Considerations 05/30/2025
  • VMware Flings is now available in Free Downloads of Broadcom Support Portal (BSP) 05/19/2025
  • VMUG Connect 2025 - Minimal VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.x in a Boxย  05/15/2025
  • Programmatically accessing the Broadcom Compatibility Guide (BCG) 05/06/2025

Advertisment

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Copyright WilliamLam.com © 2025

 

Loading Comments...