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Nested ESXi 5.1 Supports VMXNET3 Network Adapter Type

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I noticed something interesting while extracting the contents of ESXi 5.1 ISO for some kickstart configurations ....

Do you see it? It's a VMXNET3 driver for the VMkernel! I also confirmed by running the following ESXCLI command querying for the VMkernel module "vmxnet3":

# esxcli system module get -m vmxnet3
Module: vmxnet3
Module File: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmxnet3
License: GPL
Version: Version 1.1.32.0, Build: 799733, Interface: 9.2 Built on: Aug  1 2012
Signed Status:
Signature Issuer:
Signature Digest:
Signature FingerPrint:
Provided Namespaces:
Required Namespaces: [email protected], com.vmware.vmkapi@v2_1_0_0

***Disclaimer***: This is for educational purposes only, this is not officially supported by VMware. Use at your own risk. There is also a mention of this in the vSphere 5.1 release notes that VMs running on nested ESXi hosts using VMXNET3 driver could potentially crash. Again, not supported user at your own risk.

Next I decided to create a Nested ESXi 5.1 VM, but instead of selecting the e1000 driver which was the only network adapter type that would function for running a nested ESXi host, I choose the VMXNET3 adapter and to my surprise ESXi's networking stack was fully functional.

You can see from the above screenshot, I have a two VMXNET3 network adapters for my nested ESXi 5.1 VM. Here are two additional screenshot of the physical adapters as seen by nested ESXi 5.1 host and you can see that it shows up as VMware Inc. VMXNET3

I have not tried any performance tests, so not sure if there are going to be any significant benefits but pretty cool nonetheless!

vInception #NotSupported Slides Posted

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I was pinged by a few folks asking if my #NotSupported session that I presented at VMworld US would be available online, so here is the slide deck to my vInception presentation.

I would also like to thank everyone that attended my session! I had a lot of fun and hopefully you did too!  

UPDATE: I just realized the livestream recording videos are online, but they are not very clear. Apologies for that. I heard the better records from the vBrownbag crew should be up shortly, so once those are up, I will replace them on the site.

Part 1:

Watch live streaming video from vmwarecommunitytv at livestream.com

Part 2:

Specifying Default Domains for vSphere Web Client Login

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If you add an additional identity source to vCenter SSO, such as Active Directory during vCenter Server setup, you might have noticed that you need to specify the full domain name and user id to be able to login to the vSphere Web Client.

It took me awhile to figure out where to set the default domain as I thought it would have been in the VCSA web management interface as I deployed my VCSA using an automated script. I thought I share this quick tidbit in case someone was running into a similar issue.

To specify a default domain for one of your identity sources, you will need to login to vSphere Web Client as "root" or an administrator who has access to the vCenter SSO Configurations. Click on Administration tab and then to Configuration under "Sign-On and Discovery" on the left hand side of the screen.

You should see your AD identity source at the top as well as the two default identity source provided by vCenter SSO (these can not be removed). If you want to add an identity source as a default domain, you will need to highlight your identity source and then select the CD icon with the arrow, which will add that to list of default domains at the bottom of the screen. 

Once your domain is listed at the bottom, you will need to perform one additional step which is to actually save the configuration by clicking on the little "disk" icon. I did not realize this until I logged out and nothing changed.

Note: By default, when you add to the default domain list, you will append to the very end of the list. You have the ability to arrange the order by highlighting the domain and using the up/down arrows.

Go ahead and log out and log back in and now you only have to specify the username as the default domain will automatically be used.