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Quick Tip - Disable network traffic monitoring (promiscuous) UI prompt in VMware Fusion

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While working on some demos planned for my VMware Explore session, Tech Deep Dive: Automating VMware ESXi Installation At Scale [CODEB1574LV], I kept getting this network monitoring prompt when powering up my Nested ESXi VM running in VMware Fusion.


Since Nested ESXi requires the use of promiscuous mode (for inner-VM networking), you will be prompted to approve of the request or networking will be disabled. For demo purposes, you probably do not want this prompting and I was wondering if this could be disabled. After a quick ping in our internal VMware Hosted Google Space, I learned that we can disable the UI prompt by adding a VMX option to the VM.

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Useful vSphere Automation techniques for assisting with CrowdStrike remediation

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By now, you have probably heard about or have directly been impacted by the recent CrowdStrike software update to Microsoft Windows system causing an unprecedented global outage. I know IT administrators are working around the clock to remediate thousands if not tens of thousands of Windows systems, the current recommended remediation process from CrowdStrike is definitely painful since it requires users to go into Windows safe mode to remove the offending file. To further complex things, most organizations enable Microsoft Bitlocker, which adds additional step to the already painful manual remediation process as you now have to locate your recovery keys before you login to apply the fix.

Within hours of the CrowdStrike news, I already saw a number of inquiries from our customers and field asking if there were any automated solutions or scripts that could aide in their remediation as asking any organization to manually remediate is a non-starter with the scale of deployments for most Enterprises. While getting up to speed on the remediation steps and thinking about how our vSphere platform can help users automate, what is typically a manual task, I had a few ideas that folks might find useful.

Disclaimer: The scripts provided in this article are meant as examples, please test and adapt them based on your own environment as these have not been tested in any official capacity and the behaviors may vary from environment to environment. Please use at your own risk.

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Slick Jonsbo D31 computer case with embedded LCD screen for homelab

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Last month, I noticed a very interesting DIY (Do it Yourself) computer build from fellow colleague Cyprien Laplace, who you might know from the ESXi-Arm team.


No surprise, the build was for a new ESXi-Arm homelab using an ASRock Ampere Altra (ALTRAD8UD-1L2T) and configured with 64 CPUs and 128GB of memory! 🔥

At first, when Cyprien was sharing his build updates on Twitter/X, it looked like a standard DIY project but then several folks noticed he had a pretty unique computer case that included a built-in LCD screen! The classic grey/yellow screen pictured above running ESXi-Arm looks amazing and certainly useful for those wanting to remove the dependency of an external monitor.

If you are in the market for building or upgrading your homelab and want a unique computer case, check out th Jonsbo D31 which comes in both Black or White with two different models:

Black

White

Cyprien's ESXi-Arm build also recently won the best homelab community build (#3) project that was sponsored by Newegg and Ampere, so congrats on the W! 🥳🖥️🐈‍⬛