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Nested ESXi 5.1 Supports VMXNET3 Network Adapter Type

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I noticed something interesting while extracting the contents of ESXi 5.1 ISO for some kickstart configurations ....

Do you see it? It's a VMXNET3 driver for the VMkernel! I also confirmed by running the following ESXCLI command querying for the VMkernel module "vmxnet3":

# esxcli system module get -m vmxnet3
Module: vmxnet3
Module File: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmxnet3
License: GPL
Version: Version 1.1.32.0, Build: 799733, Interface: 9.2 Built on: Aug  1 2012
Signed Status:
Signature Issuer:
Signature Digest:
Signature FingerPrint:
Provided Namespaces:
Required Namespaces: [email protected], com.vmware.vmkapi@v2_1_0_0

***Disclaimer***: This is for educational purposes only, this is not officially supported by VMware. Use at your own risk. There is also a mention of this in the vSphere 5.1 release notes that VMs running on nested ESXi hosts using VMXNET3 driver could potentially crash. Again, not supported user at your own risk.

Next I decided to create a Nested ESXi 5.1 VM, but instead of selecting the e1000 driver which was the only network adapter type that would function for running a nested ESXi host, I choose the VMXNET3 adapter and to my surprise ESXi's networking stack was fully functional.

You can see from the above screenshot, I have a two VMXNET3 network adapters for my nested ESXi 5.1 VM. Here are two additional screenshot of the physical adapters as seen by nested ESXi 5.1 host and you can see that it shows up as VMware Inc. VMXNET3

I have not tried any performance tests, so not sure if there are going to be any significant benefits but pretty cool nonetheless!

Configuring ESXi Power Management Policy Using the CLI

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An interesting question on the VMTN forum caught my eye today, which was around configuring ESXi's Power Management Policy using the command-line via a kickstart script. I found this question to be interesting as I never had to tweak this configuration and was curious myself to see how you might be able to perform this via the command-line as I never recall seeing a command relating to the power management settings.

After a few minutes of digging, I found that the standard set of CLI's such as ESXCLI, vim-cmd, etc. do not provide a way to configure ESXi's power management settings but did find it was possible using my other favorite "not officially supported" CLI called vsish. Now, you can of course create a remote script using the vSphere API to configure this setting, but if you are looking to modify this within a kickstart script, this is route you will want to take.

UPDATE (01/12/15) - I just found out today from Engineering that it is possible to configure ESXi power management policy using ESXCLI. Though the parameters are currently set to hidden, you can use the following command to set the appropriate policy based on your enviornment.

esxcli system settings advanced set --option=/Power/CpuPolicy --string-value="High Performance"

UPDATE (11/04/14) - It turns out configuration changes made directly through vsish do not persist after a reboot, this might be problematic for most of you 😉 Luckily, Alan Castonguay who works in our GSS organization reached out and created a nice pyvmomi (vSphere SDK or Python) script that can be executed in the ESXi shell and of course it can easily be integrated into a Kickstart script. I have tested his sample script to verify its functionality and have also checked it into my Github repository so that others can benefit from. You can download the script which I have named configure_esxi_power_policy.py

If you run the script without any arguments, it will display the current power policy that has been enabled as seen in the screenshot below:

configure-esx-power-policy-0
To change the policy, you will need to specify the "shortName" power policy, in this example I want to change it from "static" to "low":

configure-esx-power-policy-1
To check whether your ESXi host supports power management, run the following command:

~ # vsish -e get /power/hardwareSupport
Hardware power management support {
CPU power management:Enhanced Intel SpeedStep(R)
Memory power management:Not available
}

To view the current power management setting, run the following command:

~ # vsish -e get /power/currentPolicy
Host power management policy {
ID: 2
Short name:dynamic
Long name:Balanced
Description:Reduce energy consumption with minimal performance compromise
}

Just like the vSphere Client, you have 4 options which maps to the "ID" property as seen above. You can get more details by querying each of the policy (1-4), here is an example:

~ # vsish -e get /power/policy/1
Host power management policy {
ID: 1
Short name:static
Long name:High Performance
Description:Do not use any power management features
}

Here's a quick table that maps the policy ID to power management policy which is the same order as shown in the vSphere Client:

Policy ID Power Management Policy
1 High Performance
2 Balanced
3 Lower Power
4 Custom

To change the power management policy, run the following command:

~ # vsish -e set /power/currentPolicy 1

So now you can integrate power management settings in your ESXi kickstart script for automated deployment and configurations!

That's so cool! Running ESXi 5.0 & 5.1 on Apple Mac Mini

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Those of you who follow me on twitter should know that I recently got my hands on an Apple Mac Mini Server (Thanks Randy K.) and are probably thinking I would install Apple OSX on the Mini. Nope! I am actually running vSphere ESXi 5.0 or 5.1 on the Mac Mini!

UPDATE (12/21): Yo no longer need to create a customized ESXi ISO for Apple Mac Mini, the necessary drivers are now included in the new ESXi 5.0 Update 2 and will work out of the box. Please take a look at this article for more details.

UPDATE (01/18): To run ESXi 5.1 on Mac Mini 5,1 or 5,3 please follow the same steps outlined below but for an ESXi 5.1 ISO image. If you are trying to run ESXi 5.0 or 5.1 on the new 2012 Apple Mac Mini 6,2 please refer to this blog post for the instructions.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware. Use at your own risk.

Note: I did not have a spare monitor at home and luckily the Mac Mini has a DVI output which I was able to connect to my 46" TV. Nothing like ESXi on the big screen 🙂

Even though this is not officially supported by VMware, it is still a very cool solution and the Mac Mini is great form factor for a vSphere home lab. I also want to mention that this was only possible with the research from the folks over at Paraguin Consulting who initially blogged about the process needed to get ESXi 5 running on a Mac Mini. I would highly recommend you check out their blog post which provides additional details as well as a step by step installation guide including screenshots for each step.

I did not have access to an Apple Super Drive which is what the Paraguin folks used in their installation guide, as they thought formatting a USB key would have taken too long ... and who has a CD burner these days? 😉 There is also an additional step that is needed to get network connectivity which requires the user to manually install a network driver on the ESXi host.

I decided to go down the route of using a USB key to perform the installation and using a spare 1GB USB key, I created a custom ESXi installation that included the network driver which allows for network connectivity during and after the installation.

What you will need:

Step 1 - Extract the offline bundle "tg3-3.120h.v50.2-offline_bundle-547149.zip" from Broadcom zip file

Step 2 - Use Image Builder to add the Broadcom driver and create a custom ESXi 5 ISO (steps taken from this VMware KB article)

# Add the ESXi 5.0 Update 1 Offline Bundle

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot "C:\VMware-ESXi-5.0.0-623860-depot.zip"

# Add the Broadcom Offline VIB

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot "C:\tg3-3.120h.v50.2-offline_bundle-547149.zip"

# Create a new Image Profile (in example, I'm using the full version w/tools)

New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile "ESXi-5.0.0-623860-standard" -name "ESXi50u1-Custom"

# Add the broadcom driver to our Image Profile

Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXi50u1-Custom" -SoftwarePackage "net-tg3"

# Create an ISO from our custom Image Profile

Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile "ESXi50u1-Custom" -ExportToISO -filepath C:\VMware-ESXi-5.0u1-Custom.iso

Step 3 - Plug in a USB key into your system and run UNetbootin which will take the custom ISO we just created and make it bootable on the USB key

Step 4 - Finally, power on your Mac Mini and plug in the USB key. You can either hold the "Alt/Option" key while the system is booting and select the EFI volume OR just plug the USB key and the ESXi installer should automatically start up.

After a few minutes, you should now have ESXi 5 running on your Mac Mini, here is my setup:

Note: If you wish to add a custom kickstart file so it automatically installs and configures the host, take a look at this blog post for the details. If you want the Mac Mini to automatically boot from USB without having to press the "Alt/Option" key after installation, you can set the default boot device by following this article here.

Since you are running ESXi on Apple hardware, you can also create Mac OSX Virtual Machines (10.5 Server and 10.6 Server) and with the latest release of vSphere 5.0 Update 1, OSX 10.7 (Lion) is now officially supported. To install OSX 10.7 as a VM, make sure you follow the instructions here.

Here is a screenshot of running OSX Lion 64bit as a VM running on ESXi 5 running on a Mac Mini 😀

If you are looking to refresh your vSphere home lab, definitely consider looking at the Mac Mini, which can get up to a max of 16GB of memory. Also if you are wondering if other people are doing this, I would recommend you check out Christopher Well's vSamarai blog here which details his experience using the Mac Mini as well as voting for his VMworld CFP which will also include topic about running ESXi on Mac Mini.

I want to thank Randy K. again for lending me the Mac Mini, you rock dude! Hopefully this will not be the last article about the Mac Mini 😉

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