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Automating Active Directory Domain Join in ESX(i) Kickstart

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I recently received an email asking if it was possible to automate the joining of an ESXi 4.1 host to Active Directory within a kickstart installation. The simple answer is yes; you can easily do so using the same trick found in tip #7 in Automating ESXi 4.1 Kickstart Tips & Tricks post which connects locally to the vSphere MOB using python.

Having said that, there is a small caveat to this solution in which the credentials used to join the ESX(i) host must be exposed in clear-text, this may or may not be acceptable. A potential way of getting this to work is to create a dedicated windows service account with limited privileges to add only ESXi hosts to your domain.

The reason for the use of clear-text password is the vSphere API method that is used to join an ESX(i) host to AD domain, joinDomain(), only supports plain text.

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Automating ESXi 4.1 Kickstart Tips & Tricks

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While testing the new kickstart functionality in ESXi 4.1, I ran into a few issues trying to convert a classic ESX 4.x deployment to ESXi 4.1. I thought I share some of the tips and tricks I have learned, so others will not encounter the same issues.

Before diving in and creating an ESXi 4.1 kickstart configuration, make sure you spend some time going over the documentation provided by VMware, specifically the ESXi Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide.

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VCF 9.1 - Are You Using the Correct ESXCLI Command to Enable NVMe Tiering?

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Historically, enabling NVMe Tiering prior to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 was not very user friendly, as it required users to remember three distinct ESXCLI commands.

# Enable or Disable NVMe Tiering
esxcli system settings kernel set -s MemoryTiering -v TRUE

# Configure the Tiering % 
esxcli system settings advanced set -o /Mem/TierNvmePct -i 100

# Configure NVMe device for with NVMe Tiering
esxcli system tierdevice create -d /vmfs/devices/disks/${NVME_TIERING_DEVICE}

By now, most users have probably made a mental note of these commands, with some even incorporating them into their automated ESX Kickstart deployments (example), so it is something you do not have to remember.

VCF 9.1 introduces a new method for enabling and configuring NVMe Tiering that is significantly simpler and no longer requires a system reboot. As a result of these improvements, the ESXCLI commands used in previous releases will no longer properly enable NVMe Tiering in VCF 9.1 and later.

I have seen an increasing number of users, both internally and externally, report that they have enabled NVMe Tiering, only to discover that it was never properly activated due to the use of the legacy ESXCLI commands.


Users will typically share a screenshot from vCenter Server similar to the one above, and there are two dead giveaways that NVMe Tiering was not properly enabled.

  • The first is the traditional memory capacity view, which does not reflect the combined memory capacity based on the configured NVMe Tiering ratio.
  • The second is the new Memory Tiering widget in the vSphere UI, where the Tier 1 capacity, representing the NVMe Tiering device capacity, shows a value of 0.

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