WilliamLam.com

Heads up: ESXi 5.x & 6.0 unable to detect newer Apple Mac Pro 6,1 local SSD Device

by // 12 Comments

Over the last couple of weeks there have been several reports coming in from customers that the local SSD device found in newer Apple Mac Pro 6,1 were no longer being detected by ESXi. Starting with ESXi 5.5 Patch03 and ESXi 6.0, the Apple Mac Pro 6,1 was officially supported but it looks like the latest versions of the Mac Pro 6,1 that are being shipped contain  a slightly different local SSD device which is not recognized by ESXi.

This was not the first time that this has happened, when the 2014 Mac Mini were first released, they too had a similar issue in which a custom VIB was required to get the internal device to get recognized by ESXi. There is an internal bug (PR 1487494) that is currently tracking the issue and if you are also experiencing this problem, please file an SR and have the GSS Engineer attach your case to this bug.

In the meantime, there is an unofficial workaround which was discovered by one of my readers (Mr. Spock) that by installing the community SATA-XACHI VIB over on Andreas Peetz VIB Depot site, both ESXi 5.5 and ESXi 6.0 will then recognize the local SSD Device. You will need to either use VMware Image Builder or Andreas ESXi Customizer tool to create a custom image if you decide to install ESXi directly on the local SSD device. I personally would recommend installing ESXi on USB device, this would allow you to install the VIB as a post-installation and not requiring a custom ESXi image.

Automating installation of VMware Tools for Mac OS X

by // 1 Comment

After publishing my recent article on automating the silent installation of VMware Tools for Linux guestOSes, I received a similar question regarding Mac OS X guests and whether the existing script would also apply. The answer is no since Mac OS X packages differ from the Linux installres, but it is possible to automate the installation of VMware Tools for Mac OS X guests.

After quickly looking into this, I realized there are actually several options that are available to customers and it would depend on how you would like to install VMware Tools and what platform you are running your Mac OS X guests on. I will share a couple of options which also includes existing solutions that have already been developed. At the end of the day, the choice will ultimately be up to the administrator on how he/she would like to proceed.

[Read more...]

Quick Tip - How to change serial number for Mac OS X VM?

by // 5 Comments

Last week I wrote an article on how to ensure unique serial numbers are generated when cloning Mac OS X VMs in vCloud Director and as part of that research, I also came across another neat trick that I learned from one of our Engineers, Regis Duchesne. It turns outs that in recent releases of ESXi and Fusion, you can now set a specific serial number for a Mac OS X VM for customers who may require this for testing purposes.

mac-osx-serial
To set a particular serial number, you simply just need to add the following setting to your VMX file (which can also be automated when working with ESXi via the vSphere API):

serialNumber = "SERIAL-NUMBER"

Although, I was not able to find the particular release of ESXi and Fusion that introduced this capability, this trick could come in handy for those of you who have this specific requirement.