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How to host your own simple ESXi update depot?

07.08.2022 by William Lam // 3 Comments

I recently upgraded my single ESXi host, which is used for my personal vSphere Homelab, to the latest patch release of ESXi 7.0 Update 3e using ESXCLI and connecting directly to VMware's online depot.

I still love how easy it is to update a single ESXi host using ESXCLI and using VMware's Patch Repo -

ESXI_VERSION=ESXi-7.0U3e-19898904-standard

"esxcli software profile update -d https://t.co/cs4yUyvnxQ -p ${ESXI_VERSION}"https://t.co/77Iu0K0hUG pic.twitter.com/nLhx5ztmNa

— William Lam (@lamw) July 7, 2022

This is the same method that I have been using since 2012 when I first wrote about this in a blog post using a pretty cool method of upgrading/patching a single ESXi hosts. If you are fortunate to have multiple ESXi hosts and a vCenter Server, you definitely should be using vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) provided by vCenter Server rather than the ESXCLI method, especially as there are no upgrade pre-checks built into in compared to vLCM.

Although my environment has a vCenter Server, I can not use vLCM because I only have a single ESXi host and ESXCLI method is really the only viable option. Customers may have a simliar setup, whether that is for a homelab, smaller environment or simply do not have a vCenter Server. Using the ESXCLI workflow, it certainly is the easiest if your ESXi host can reach VMware's online repo which is hosted at hostupdate.vmware.com, however this may not be possible for everyone, especially for remote locations where connectivity may be spotty or simply is not allowed to have outbound connectivity.

For such environments, you might be interested in hosting your own ESXi update repo and as always, I was curious on how one could setup something simliar without much effort and well, here we are with this blog post 😀

[Read more...]

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Hiking Trails

06.04.2022 by William Lam // 3 Comments

This post is not technology related, so feel free to ignore.

For those that know me or follow me on Twitter, know that I enjoy the outdoors and hiking. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, our family would normally go on several hikes a year, usually when there is a long holiday weekend or during the winter break season.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, I came to learn that my buddy Sunny Dua was doing a fun challenge with his son, 30 hikes in a 30 days (IIRC) and I thought that was such a great idea! I figure I would slowly ease my daughter into hiking, especially as she was much younger than Sunny's son. With that, I started hiking with my daughter (late July), doing one hike every Sunday and see where it goes.

As you can see from the tweet below, we really enjoyed our time together and she also reached an amazing milestone concluding 2020 with 20 hikes, totaling 100+miles!

🥳🎉 👏 Super proud of #kinderlam & her major accomplishment today! What an awesome way to end 2020 💪

Total Hikes: 20 (Late July to today)
Total Miles: 103.3 miles
Longest Hike: 12.5 miles
Most Hikes in Week: 4
Most Miles in Week: 30.6 miles
Highest Elevation: 2,500 ft pic.twitter.com/4a8ZlJttrU

— William Lam (@*protected email*) (@lamw) December 29, 2020

During this time, I also kept a log of all the trails that we had completed and potential trails for the future, especially with so many options within the Bay Area. I have shared this list with friends and colleagues looking for hiking options and I realize I should probably just make it public for anyone that might be interested in checking out a new hike if you live in area or visiting.

Hiking Trails: https://github.com/lamw/hiking

As you can see, we have continued with this tradition (time permitting) and will continue to update the list of trails that we complete as a family.

Total Hikes: 66 (278.67 miles)

  • 2020: 20 (103.3 miles)

  • 2021: 20 (72.09 miles)

  • 2022: 26 (103.28 miles)

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // hiking

Alan Renouf, and his family, need your help. Please support/donate!

08.27.2020 by William Lam // 4 Comments

In case you have not heard, the Bay Area has recently been affected by a number of unprecedented wildfires which has destroyed several hundred thousands acres of land and is no where near containment. Thousands of families have been affected and this week, we found out our good friend Alan Renouf was also impacted and sadly lost his home in the fires.

Luckily, Alan and his family is safe, but as you can see from the devastation below (yes, this was actually his house on the left), it will take a long time to rebuild if that is even possible.


I know many of you know Alan for his work in PowerCLI, vSphere Automation and more recently his efforts in the VMware Office of CTO for Project VXR focused on Virtual and Augmented Reality. Like many, I have also benefited from Alan's work and if you feel the same way and would like to help him and his family out, please consider donating to the GoFundme page below. Like many of the affected families, they are currently staying in a hotel which is being paid out of their own pockets and any amount will go a long way! Please consider sharing this with others in your community that may be able to help and thank you for your help.

Direct GoFundMe URL: https://www.gofundme.com/f/renouf-fire-relief-fund

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Author

William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native technologies, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC)

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Recent

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