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Quick Tip - TPM 2.0 connection cannot be established after upgrading to ESXi 8.0

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There has been several reports from folks internally and within the community that after upgrading to ESXi 8.0, they are now seeing the following TPM error message:

TPM 2.0 device detected but a connection cannot be established.


The common theme between all these reported cases that I have seen is that they are all using an Intel NUC. While the Intel NUCs may list TPM support, they do not support either TPM Interface Specification (TIS) for TPM 1.2 or the First In, First Out (FIFO) for TPM 2.0, which are industry standards for communicating with a TPM device that ESXi uses.

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Automated enablement of vSphere with Tanzu using vSphere Zones in vSphere 8

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vSphere Zones is just one of the the many exciting new Tanzu capabilities that is now part of vSphere 8. My buddy Cormac Hogan did a nice write-up on vSphere Zones, which I highly recommend folks check it out get more details.

This blog post will focus on using the new vCenter Server REST API to enable vSphere with Tanzu using the new vSphere Zones feature in vSphere 8.


For those interested in running a lean and minimal setup in their homelab, you can deploy a fully functional vSphere with Tanzu environment with just 32GB of memory and this is still applicable for vSphere 8!

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Quick Tip - Automating ESXi 8.0 install using allowLegacyCPU=true

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For those looking to install ESXi 8.0 but have an unsupported CPU, the following kernel boot option allowLegacyCPU=true can be added which would bypass the installer pre-check as shown in the screenshot below.

When the ESXi installer bypass happens, instead of an error which forces you to reboot, you will get a warning message and user must acknowledge they understand they are using an unsupported CPU and then continue with the installation.

UPDATE (10/05/23) - ESXi 8.0 Update 2 requires CPU processors that support XSAVE instruction or you will not be able to upgrade and means you will hardware with a minimum of an Intel Sandy Bridge or AMD Bulldozer processor or later.

Note: For more information, also checkout my vSphere 8 Homelab considerations blog post for more tips and tricks.

For an interactive installation of ESXi, the additional acknowledgment is not an issue but for an automated installation of ESXi using Kickstart, this can be a problem since you are still required to manually hit enter before the installation actually begins. The question from a couple of my readers, is there a workaround for this?

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