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vCenter Server Identity Federation with Synology SSO

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I recently found another cool use case for my Synology NAS, which is using the Synology SSO application to setup vCenter Server Identity Federation. I had not considered looking at Synology, but I was recently setting up some additional DNS entries and noticed there was SSO Server application, that supports both SAML2 and OIDC.


For those with a Synology, this is a super easy way to get hands on experience with configuring vCenter Server Identity Federation and this can all run locally within your environment, unlike some of the other external identity providers which typically will require direct/in-direction connection to your vCenter Server or require a SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) proxy server.

Disclaimer: Synology SSO is currently not an officially supported vCenter Server IdP, please use at your own risk.

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ESXi on GMKtec NucBox K11

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The GMKtec NucBox has been growing in popularity amongst the VMware community as a modern AMD Ryzen-based alternative to the Intel/ASUS NUC, offering many of the same advantages while avoiding some of the drawbacks of Intel's Hybrid CPU architecture.

In preparation for my upcoming session at the inaugural VMUG Connect Conference in April, I have been experimenting with several modern hardware options, with the goal of deploying the full VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) solution for use within a lab environment, while still staying budget friendly!

I know several folks have had great success with the GMKtec NucBox K8 Plus and it just so happens, while browsing the GMKtec website, I noticed an additional NucBox has just been released called the K11.


While the differences between the K8 Plus and K11 is pretty minimal, I was interested in validating some new hardware add-ons, so getting the latest hardware would hopefully give me the best chance!

In collaboration with the VMware {Code} team, I was able to get hands on with the latest GMKtec NucBox K11!

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Quick Tip - VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Bringup fails without persistent ESX-OSData

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You will never run into this problem if you follow current recommended practices to install the ESX-OSData volume on a persistent storage device that could either be dedicated and/or co-located your ESXi installation.

For those deploying VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) in a lab environment, you might attempt to reserve the limited number of storage devices for use with vSAN and decide to install ESXi on a USB device, which is perfectly fine but if you do not select a persistent storage device for the ESX-OSData volume, then it will default to use the ESXi ramdisk.

I recently observed that if you have such a configuration, the VCF Cloud Builder Bringup process will fail after attempting (three times) to re-deploy the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA).


As you can see from the screenshot above,  VCF Cloud Builder UI does not provide any details and ask users to look at the vCenter Server installation logs.

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