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Running Nested ESXi, NSX-V or NSX-T on top of NSX-T

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Nested Virtualization is an extremely useful tool that helps customers easily test and try out new VMware products and solutions before rolling that into a proper development environment for further validation. This is especially handy for those wanting to setup an NSX-based environment and simulating their actual deployment topology, configuration and upgrade workflows.

In this past year, I have seen a 10x increase in the number of NSX-T based questions that have come up from customers and our field, the adoption of NSX-T is definitely in full swing. As expected, questions about running Nested ESXi on top of a physical NSX-T deployment has come up and there has actually been several variations that have been asked about whether that is Nested ESXi using VSS, VDS, NSX-V or even NSX-T running on top of an N-VDS, which is the virtual switch that NSX-T uses.

Luckily all of these combinations work and just require some basic configuration changes within NSX-T. However, before I continue, let me remind folks again that VMware does NOT officially support Nested Virtualization.

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vCenter Event Broker Appliance Updates - VMworld, Fling, Community & Open Source

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VMworld

At VMworld Barcelona, Michael Gasch and I had the privilege of presenting our #CODE1379E "If This Then That" for vSphere - The Power of Event Driven Automation session. The room was completely packed for a 9am session on Thursday after the big VMworld Party and we just wanted to thank everyone who attended the session and for those that came up to talk to us afterwards. We really had no idea how the session would be received but from the feedback, tweets and DM's we have received and continue to receive, it looks like the session really resonated with customers. In case you missed the session or could not attend VMworld, the session was recorded and is actually available for everyone to view. You just need to sign in with a free VMworld account.

VMworld Recording: "If This Then That" for vSphere

VMware Fling

For those who attended the VMworld session in person, there was a nice surprise at the very end, which I think may be a VMworld first. Michael and I have been working on a side project in our spare time called the vCenter Event Broker Appliance or VEBA for short. This solution enables customers to easily create Event Driven Automation based on vCenter Server Events and rather than just showing off some cool demos, we wanted to leave the audience with something they can actually use right now!

With a little chant that was started by Emad Younis (this was NOT planned), the audience had spoken and wanted us to publish the planned VMware Fling which we were going to release in the coming days since we had just finished the process literally the week of VMworld. I figure its VMworld, this is what customers, partners and colleagues come here for and with a click of a button and crossing my fingers, the vCenter Event Broker Appliance Fling went LIVE.

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Customizing vCenter Alarm Email Subject and Body

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One of the automated actions that can be configured when a vCenter Server Alarm is triggered is to send an email notification. Over the years, I have seen a number of requests and questions about customizing the email and whether an email template exists. I personally have not used this feature much which has been around since the introduction of vCenter Server and mainly because I have always worked in an environment where we had dedicated monitoring tools that provide notifications including emails.

Most recently, I noticed an increase number of questions around this topic and I was curious on whether a solution exists today or if this is still a gap today? A quick Google search landed me on this 2013 VMTN thread which included several workarounds that customers have found. However, the only viable "supported" and "persisted" option at the time within that thread was to use the vSphere API/PowerCLI to customize the alarm action.

While going through this exercise myself, I found that our vSphere UI has had some enhancements since that 2013 thread and I thought it was worth sharing an update in 2019 on how customers can customize both the email subject and body for vCenter Alarms. One thing to note is that there is no generic email template that can be edited, the email customizations are applied on a per-Alarm action basis and this is applicable for both vCenter Server running in a traditional on-premises environment as well as for VMware Cloud on AWS or Dell EMC.

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