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Automating the retrieval & reclamation of VM MAC address blocklist for vCenter Server using the vSphere MOB

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As shared in this blog post HERE and HERE, vCenter Server has a built-in mechanism for managing VM MAC addresses where the original VM has been migrated to a different vCenter Server (regardless of the vCenter SSO Domain) using a VM MAC Address blocklist.

The VM MAC address blocklist functionality is still only available using a private API and the only way to find out what VM MAC addresses are currently in the list is by interactively using the vSphere MOB and the fetchRelocatedMACAddress API.

Recently, I had a question from a customer who was looking to clear the VM MAC address blocklist and was wondering if that was possible and whether there was an API to perform this operation?

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Downgrading new VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) or VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) licenses to 7.x

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When you access your new VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) or VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) license in the Broadcom Support Portal (BSP), it is delivered using the new solution license key type  which can activate multiple components within a VVF or VCF deployment.

By default, VVF and VCF licenses will come entitled for latest vSphere 8.0 Update 2b and VCF 5.1.1 respectively, because those are the minimum versions that support the new solution license key type. With that said, users can also downgrade their existing VVF and VCF licenses to support earlier vSphere 8.x and 7.x releases using the BSP license management system, which was something I had recently learned about and went through the process myself, so here is what it looks like end-to-end.

Note: License downgrade requires both user downgrade permissions in the BSP license management as well as using non-NFR licenses, which can obtained through the BSP self-service "Trials and Beta" or internally for employees. For NFR licenses, downgrade is not available.

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Customizing SMBIOS strings (hardware manufacturer and vendor) for Nested ESXi 

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Nested ESXi continues to be an invaluable resource that I use on almost a daily basis from solution prototyping, customer reproduction to automated lab deployments supporting both VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF), the use cases are simply endless!

While you can do almost anything with Nested ESXi, mimicking or simulating specific hardware strings such as the manufacturer or vendor is not really possible or at least very easily. I was recently reminded of this topic again as this has been something I wanted to look into but just not had the time. In fact, some of this was inspired by a conversation I had with fellow colleague Luke Huckaba who found a clever trick playing with the default Virtual Machine boot ROMs which are shipped with both ESXi and our VMware Desktop Hypervisors (Workstation/Fusion).

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