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Using vCenter Converter 6.3 with vSphere 8 or VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC-A)

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Since the announcement that vCenter Converter was re-returning, customers have been looking forward to the day that vCenter Converter would be an officially supported product again. Luckily, folks did not have to wait long from the early beta almost a month ago and just a couple of days ago, vCenter Converter 6.3 has officially GA'ed!

The goal of this initial vCenter Converter release was to bring functional parity with the last supported release, updated development and security practices and a few minor enhancements including some new Guest Operating Systems and vSphere 7.0 support. The team still has a ton in store for subsequent releases and if there are certain features you really want to see, feel free to leave a comment and I will be sure to share it with PM/Engr team.

With that said, I have also been getting a lot of questions from customers interested in using Converter to migrate workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC-A), especially as they think about modernizing and consolidating their Datacenter infrastructure. While, VMware Cloud on AWS as a destination will be in scope for the next release, I was curious on whether it would work given that vSphere 7.0 support was added to latest vCenter Converter release.

You know what happens when I get curious ... I just have to try it out! 😅

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Enabling vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture (ESA) using Nested ESXi

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To get the full benefits and support of the new vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture (ESA), you will need modern hardware from the official vSAN ESA Ready Node HCL. However, from an education and learning point of view, you may want to explore some of the VSAN ESA workflows and easiest way to do that, well you probably know the answer .... it is using Nested ESXi of course!

With my recently published vSphere and vSAN 8 Lab Deployment Script, you can use that as the base and the Nested ESXi 8.0 IA Virtual Appliance to setup vSAN 8 ESA using virtual hardware 😀


There are only a couple of things to be aware of prior to setting up vSAN ESA using Nested ESXi.

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Quick Tip - Accessing new custom theme editor for ESXi 8.0 Host Client

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While looking over the vSphere 8 release notes, I had noticed there was also release notes for new version of the ESXi Embedded Host Client, which is an HTML 5 UI for accessing standalone ESXi host. The really interesting feature that stood out to me was the following:

Ability to change the user interface theme

Initially, I thought this was referring to the new "gray" theme which is the default when logging in.


I thought it was a bit strange to refer to this as being able to change user interface. What I did not realize was that the theme editor for the ESXi Host Client was actually hiding else where in the UI ... Thanks to Mark Gabbs for sharing the details!

UPDATE (10/12/22) - After publishing this blog post, I noticed a more detailed article was posted on the VMware Blog regarding the new ESXi Host Client 2, which includes even more new features such as markdown support for customizing the ESXi DCUI and Host Client login window.

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