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Community Networking Driver for ESXi Fling v1.2.2

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The Community Networking Driver for ESXi Fling v1.2.2 has just been released and is a minor update which enables a number of new Intel I220/I221/I225/I226 devices:

  • 8086:0d9f Ethernet Controller I225-IT(2)
  • 8086:15f8 Ethernet Controller I225-I
  • 8086:3100 Ethernet Controller I225-K
  • 8086:3101 Ethernet Controller I225-K(2)
  • 8086:5502 Ethernet Controller I225-LMvP(2)
  • 8086:5504 Ethernet Controller I226-K
  • 8086:125b Ethernet Controller I226-LM
  • 8086:125c Ethernet Controller I226-V
  • 8086:125d Ethernet Controller I226-IT
  • 8086:15f7 Ethernet Controller I220-V
  • 8086:125e Ethernet Controller I221-V

Managing VM snapshot retention policies using the VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA)

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vSphere Snapshots is an amazing technology that has enabled our customers to do so many amazing things from application lifecycle and testing to operating system updates and many other use cases. Like any technology, if it is miss-used, the benefits can quickly turn into challenge or nightmare.

As Peter Parker once said, "With great power comes great responsibility" which I think is one way to summarize VM snapshot usage 😆


I am pretty sure that every VI Admin out there has at least one story about vSphere snapshots gone wrong. Due to the convenience, ease of use and some times miss-understanding of how vSphere snapshot works, it can lead to a number of issues including filling up your storage and impacting other running workloads.

Now, imagine if you could implement a snapshot retention policy for your VM(s) based on the size of a given snapshot or maybe the number of days the snapshot has existed? Would that not be cool!?

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Quick deep dive into vSphere Namespace roles

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Before you can start consuming a vSphere with Tanzu enabled vSphere Cluster, you need to first create and configure a vSphere Namespace. This is a pretty straight forward process (check out this quick video if you are interested). One of the required configuration is to setup up permissions for which user/groups can access and consume the vSphere Namespace using one of the three default roles.


A question was recently raised in the community on the definition of each role since the user was not able to find more details in the official documentation. Here is a quick summary for each role and its functionality:

  • Owner - Can modify and delete vSphere Namespace
  • Can Edit - Can modify vSphere Namespace
  • Can View - Can perform read only operations on vSphere Namespace

Note: I have already shared this feedback with the vSphere with Tanzu Product Manager to help improve our documentation on this topic

There was also a related question on whether these roles mapped into Kubernetes (K8s) layer, which is the Supervisor Cluster in your vSphere with Tanzu enabled vSphere Cluster? This actually got me curious since I am still a novice when it comes to K8s access control (RBAC). I decided to take a closer look and with some trial error, I was able to see how these vSphere Namespace roles, which is a vCenter Server construct maps into the respective K8s constructs within the Supervisor Cluster.

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