WilliamLam.com

Rocky Linux RC1 on ESXi-x86 & ESXi-Arm

by // 4 Comments

This morning, I saw that Rocky Linux RC1 was now available and includes support for both x86 and AARCH64 (Arm) and I wanted to give it a quick spin on both ESXi-x86 and ESXi-Arm.

ESXi-x86

I was succesful in installing Rocky Linux on ESXi-x86 using the CentOS GuestOS type and using the defaults. You will however need to disable Secure Boot (VM Options->Boot Options) as it is currently not supported.


If you do not, you will see the following error message when booting up the ISO: Verification failed: (0x1A) Security Violation


The default network adapter for this GOS in ESXi-x86 is using VMXNET3 and it was automatically detected. If you forgot to enable networking during the configuration wizard (like I did), you will need to login and edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ens* and change enable=yes and reboot for the changes to go into effect.


VMware Tools can be installed by running the following commands:

yum -y install open-vm-tools
systemctl enable vmtoolsd
systemctl start vmtoolsd

ESXi-Arm

I was succesful in installing Rocky Linux on ESXi-Arm using the CentOS GuestOS type and using the defaults. Networking for ESXi-Arm is using e1000e and if you forgot to enable networking during the configuration wizard (like I did), you will need to login and edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ens* and change enable=yes and reboot for the changes to go into effect.

Unlike Rocky Linux for x86, there is currently not a VMware Tools package that can be installed using yum and my attempts at compiling VMware Tools lead to missing packages that are currently not available in their repository. I have already filed an issue on the VMware Tools Github repo for tracking purposes.

Stage Only & Stage and Install buttons disabled when updating to vSphere 7.0 Update 2a 

by // 6 Comments

vSphere 7.0 Update 2a was just released yesterday and it introduces the highly anticipated vSphere Virtual Machine Service which is part of the vSphere with Tanzu solution. Customers will now be able to get the exact same Kubernetes-native provisioning and management experience for deploying Virtual Machine based workloads along side their Kubernetes-based applications.

I was definitely interested in checking out this new feature and quickly navigated to my VCSA to start the upgrade and to my surprise, I noticed that both the Stage Only and Stage and Install buttons were disabled (grayed out) and preventing me from updating to the latest release!


I had filed an issue internally and after some troubleshooting, it looks like this may have been remnants caused by the previous Exception occurred in install precheck phase issue, which I had ran into during the update to 7.0 Update 2. Although I was initially pointed by Engineering to VMware KB 83145, it did not resolve the issue and I ran into a couple more errors like "Previous patching unsuccessful" and "Downloading RPM ...." messages within the VAMI UI as shown in the screenshots below

[Read more...]

2021 VMUG Advantage Community Group Buy

by // 1 Comment

Last year, I partnered up with the VMware User Group (VMUG) organization and shared with the VMware Community a special VMUG Advantage Homelab Group Buy offering, a first of its kind and it was a huge success! In fact, I still get pinged on a regular basis about the previous group buy and whether there would be another group buy?

Today, I am pleased to announce that both myself and Duncan Epping have teamed up with the VMUG organization to bring to the VMware Community the 2021 VMUG Advantage Group Buy!

For those not familiar with the VMUG Advantage membership, it provides benefits such as access to training, VMworld discounts but also to EVALExperience, which provides you with 365-days access (non-production usage) to the latest VMware solutions such as vSphere, vSAN, NSX, vRealize Suite and VMware Cloud Foundation. The EVALExperience alone is worth the normal $200 USD membership fee and is certainly one of the cheapest and easiest way to get access to all the latest VMware offerings for homelab and educational purposes.

The table below provides the respective discounts based on the quantity of VMUG Advantage membership purchases. The larger the interests group, the larger the discount.

[Read more...]