WilliamLam.com

How to forcefully disconnect a vSphere VM Console session?

by // 1 Comment

The vSphere Virtual Machine Console UI is an extremely useful interface for interacting with a VM, especially for initial configurations and/or debugging and troubleshooting purposes, such as an issue with networking. The VM console is analogous to connecting a physical keyboard and monitor to a computer, you remember the good ol' days right? 😀

Unlike the physical world, where you can only have a single person interacting with the computer, the vSphere VM Console can allow multiple users to view and interact with the VM. It is also not uncommon for customers to limit the number of simultaneous VM Console sessions, especially for security and/or for privacy purposes.


One potential down side with limiting the VM Console session to one is that another user may not be able to connect until the other session has concluded and/or has expired due to lack of activity. This recently came up as a question from a customer asking if there was a way to forcefully disconnect an existing VM Console connection?

[Read more...]

Quick Tip - Using ESXi Scripted Installation (kickstart) to configure IPv6 networking

by // 5 Comments

I have written numerous articles on the topic of ESXi Scripted Installation aka Kickstart, which is just one of the many options that enables customers to fully automate the installation and configuration of their ESXi hosts. An interesting question that recently came up internally was whether you could configure ESXi networking using IPv6, rather than IPv4 using the default ESXi Kickstart network parameters?

If you look at the ESXi network params as they are labeled such as netmask, it would seem that these are only applicable to IPv4. Although my personal experience has been exclusively IPv4, I figure I would take a quick look at the python code which powers the ESXi Kickstart infrastructure which is located under /usr/lib/vmware/weasel directory. Although I am not a Developer, from what I could grok, it seems like IPv6 might actually be possible using these exact same parameters.

Using Nested ESXi and the new vSphere 7.0 Update 2 feature HTTP Boot over virtual EFI, I was able to setup a quick prototype to validate that you can indeed configure IPv6 using the same ESXi networking parameters, which are applicable to both IPv4 and IPv6.

[Read more...]

Hiking Trails

by // 3 Comments

This post is not technology related, so feel free to ignore.

For those that know me or follow me on Twitter, know that I enjoy the outdoors and hiking. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, our family would normally go on several hikes a year, usually when there is a long holiday weekend or during the winter break season.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, I came to learn that my buddy Sunny Dua was doing a fun challenge with his son, 30 hikes in a 30 days (IIRC) and I thought that was such a great idea! I figure I would slowly ease my daughter into hiking, especially as she was much younger than Sunny's son. With that, I started hiking with my daughter (late July), doing one hike every Sunday and see where it goes.

As you can see from the tweet below, we really enjoyed our time together and she also reached an amazing milestone concluding 2020 with 20 hikes, totaling 100+miles!

During this time, I also kept a log of all the trails that we had completed and potential trails for the future, especially with so many options within the Bay Area. I have shared this list with friends and colleagues looking for hiking options and I realize I should probably just make it public for anyone that might be interested in checking out a new hike if you live in area or visiting.

Hiking Trails: https://github.com/lamw/hiking

As you can see, we have continued with this tradition (time permitting) and will continue to update the list of trails that we complete as a family.

Total Hikes: 66 (278.67 miles)

  • 2020: 20 (103.3 miles)

  • 2021: 20 (72.09 miles)

  • 2022: 26 (103.28 miles)