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Updated Nested ESXi Appliances for 7.0 Update 1d & 2a

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I have just updated my Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance collection to include support for the latest ESXi 7.0 Update 1d and 7.0 Update 2a releases. This took a bit longer than usual due to a busy schedule but also due to some fixes and enhancements that I had been working on. For those interested, you can find the detailed change log below and these updates are only applicable for these two OVAs or newer going forward.

Downloads:

Changes

  • Fixed self-sign TLS certificate generation (Subject Alternative Name now matches the provided FQDN)
  • Updated NTP settings to use ESXCLI for configuration (previously updating ntp.conf)
  • Suppressed Core Dump warning (/UserVars/SuppressCoredumpWarning)
  • Updated ESXi installation VMDK from 4 to 12GB to support ESX-OS Data & VMFS Volume
  • Automatically configure ESX-OS Data & 4GB VMFS volume
  • Disabled Follow Hardware MAC by default (/Net/FollowHardwareMac)
  • Follow Hardware MAC can now be configured using OVF property guestinfo.followmac
  • Automatically recreate vmk0 interface to ensure unique MAC Address from vmnic0
  • Automatically configure vMotion traffic on vmk0

For previous Nested ESXi Appliance OVAs and/or the Nested ESXi Content Library, please take a look at http://vmwa.re/nestedesxi

Quick Tip - Microsoft Power Automate expression to access specific row from Excel workbook

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Microsoft Power Automate is a pretty nifty service that allow users to automate various business processes using Microsoft Office 365 as well as supporting other 3rd party integrations. For a particular project I have been working on, I have been trying to figure out the best way to access a specific row of information from an Excel workbook such as the example below.


For anyone that does not have a scripting or programming background, Power Automate is relatively easy to use for basic process automation. However, if you have some scripting background, then the tool can feel a bit clunky, especially since each action must be manually created, one at a time and there are no bulk operations or even the ability to quickly duplicate an action for editing.

For my initial prototype, I had used multiple Excel Get Row action to fetch a specific row from my Excel workbook to be able to reference it later in my automation. Not only was this not optimal but I also ran into a number of connection issues since I had up to 40 of these actions. I had searched online and various Power Automate forums for better solution which would allow me to read the Excel data once and then reference it when I needed. From what I could find, most examples focused on a specific row within the document or required looping through the table which did not help me since I needed to be able to access a particular row on-demand.

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Exploring the new vSphere with Tanzu VM Service with Nested ESXi

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After upgrading my homelab to the latest vSphere 7.0 Update 2a, I was looking forward to kicking the tires on the highly anticipated vSphere with Tanzu Virtual Machine Service capability. Both Oren Penso and Myles Gray have both done a fantastic job on their respective blogs here and here demo'ing the new VM Service.

While browsing through Oren's Github repo since I came across his blog post first, a couple of things quickly caught my attention. The first was a reference to OvfEnv transport with the YAML manifests and the second was that he was able to deploy an Ubuntu VM, which is interesting since only CentOS is currently officially supported. Why was this interesting? Well, with these two pieces of information, I had a pretty good theory on how the guest customizations were being passed into the GuestOS for configuration and this gave me an idea ?

I decided to put my hypothesis to the test and try out the VM Service and deploy one of my Nested ESXi Virtual Appliance and as you can see from the tweet below, it worked! ?

Disclaimer: vSphere with Tanzu and the VM Service currently only officially supports CentOS images for deployment, other operating systems are currently not supported. This is primarily for educational and experimentation purposes only. As of vSphere 8.x, you can now bring your own OVA/OVA for use with vSphere with Tanzu

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