WilliamLam.com

Realtek Network Driver for ESXi

by // 18 Comments

I never thought this day would ever come as I am sure this will come as a complete shock to many, but I am pleased to announce that we have just released a new VMware Fling: Realtek Network Driver for ESXi 😎

Yes, you read that right! 🤯


In fact, I have it running on my Minisforum MS-A2 which has an RTL8125 (2.5GbE), which I can now use! The RTL Driver can be installed on either ESX 8.0 Update 3+ or 9.x+

This Realtek (RTL) PCIe-based driver is NOT an official driver from Realtek, it was developed by one of our VCF Engineers, Wenchao 👏

The driver currently supports the following RTL PCIe Devices:

  • RTL8111 - 1GbE
  • RTL8125 - 2.5GbE
  • RTL8126 - 5GbE
  • RTL8127 - 10GbE

To download the Realtek Network Driver for ESXi offline bundle, head over to the Free Downloads section for Flings on the Broadcom Support Portal (BSP).

[Read more...]

Updated method for automatically joining vCenter Server using ESXi Kickstart

by // 2 Comments

Have you ever written a script that gets the job done and years later, you go back and ask yourself ... what the heck did I do or why did I do it that way!?! 😅

Probably not as frequent as we should but I have found myself in these situations over the years, whether it is addressing an issue/enhancement or needing to explain the code to another colleague.

While copious free time is never on our side in IT, it does help to re-evaluate your automation and processes over the years to see if there are new techniques, enhancements that can make the automation more effective.

I was recently CC'ed on a Reddit thread about some automation that I had worked on more than 14 years ago that would automatically join an ESXi host to vCenter Server using an ESXi Kickstart script.

Knowing what I know now and probably even earlier, the solution of calling into the vSphere MOB and manually crafting the XML payload to join the ESXi host to a desired vSphere Cluster in vCenter Server was certainly not ideal, but it got the job done. We can certainly improve the solution leveraging a more modern solution, while still staying true to the original requirements of being able to perform vSphere Cluster addition directly from ESXi 8.x/9.x Kickstart without relying on external dependencies.

[Read more...]

Updated Nested ESXi 8.x & 9.0 Virtual Appliance

by // 19 Comments

Happy Sunday! Before the wave of announcements starts rolling out from VMware Explore Las Vegas, which starts tomorrow, I wanted to share a quick update. 😅

I have been pretty swamped for the past couple of months, so it has taken a bit more time to get the latest Nested ESXi Virtual Appliances published, but here are the latest 8.0 Update 3 and 9.0 versions. I have included the direct links to the download but also the intermediate Broadcom Support Portal (BSP) links for those interested in bookmarking these pages.

[Read more...]