WilliamLam.com

ESXi Advanced & Kernel Settings Reference

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Every time I need to recall or reference a specific ESXi Advanced or Kernel Setting for a customer or field inquiry, I typically need to look at a live ESXi host to see whether a given setting is defined for that version of ESXi and also how to access and/or update the settings. Depending on the interface (vSphere API, vSphere UI, ESXCLI, etc.) that you are using, you may only be able to see a subset of these properties.

For example, some ESXi Advanced Settings are only available using the vSphere API/UI while others are available in both the vSphere API/UI and ESXCLI, with the latter being a common utility for customers to view or update these settings. Similarly, for ESXi Kernel Settings, not only are there new options that are introduced with each ESXi release, but being able to easily check the default values and minimums and maximums can also be useful. I should also mention using the vSphere API/UI, you can also accessed the ESXi Kernel Settings which are prefixed with VMkernel.

As a huge VMware Automation person, I was surprised that I had not thought about creating a reference for the ESXi Advanced and Kernel Settings for recent ESXi releases? I figure this would benefit more than just myself and I have put together the following Github repo: https://github.com/lamw/esxi-advanced-and-kernel-settings where you can see all the default ESXi Advanced and Kernel Settings for ESXi releases across 6.0, 6.5, 7.0 and 8.0.


For those interested, this was generated using some PowerCLI automation and below are the two snippets for pulling the ESXi Advanced Settings (supported and runtime values) using the vSphere API and the ESXi Kernel Settings, which I used the ESXCLI interface that is exposed through the PowerCLI Get-EsxCli cmdlet.

UPDATE (08/13/24) - vCenter Server Advanced Settings Reference is now available.

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High-end Dell Precision 7770 & 7670 laptops with 128GB memory for ESXi

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I have been following the progress on the new Compression Attached Memory Module (CAMM), which was announced earlier this year and is a new laptop memory standard that has been created by Dell. Dell intends to replace the aging SODIMM memory module, which are typically found in laptops and small form factor systems like the popular Intel NUC.

Image from StorageReview

This StorageReview article by Charles Jefferies provides a nice summary of the new CAMM technology and the benefits over the 25 year old SODIMM modules. While the CAMM technology is currently proprietary, Dell has been working with Intel on this standard and have also submitted their design to the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) for CAMM to become a new industry standard for laptop memory.

My biggest interests with CAMM is the capacity of their modules which can reach up to 128GB for a single CAMM module! For SODIMM, we have been limited to 32GB for a single module for a number of years and this will not be changing any time soon. Just imagine the popular 4x4 Intel NUC with 128GB memory! 🤤

Given CAMM was just announced earlier this year, I was not expecting to see any systems that a consumer could purchase for quite some time. I was actually pleasantly surprise to learn recently, that two new high-end Dell workstation laptops can now be purchased with CAMM memory and also configured with up to 128GB of memory. 😲

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Quick Tip - Using ESXi Scripted Installation (kickstart) to configure IPv6 networking

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I have written numerous articles on the topic of ESXi Scripted Installation aka Kickstart, which is just one of the many options that enables customers to fully automate the installation and configuration of their ESXi hosts. An interesting question that recently came up internally was whether you could configure ESXi networking using IPv6, rather than IPv4 using the default ESXi Kickstart network parameters?

If you look at the ESXi network params as they are labeled such as netmask, it would seem that these are only applicable to IPv4. Although my personal experience has been exclusively IPv4, I figure I would take a quick look at the python code which powers the ESXi Kickstart infrastructure which is located under /usr/lib/vmware/weasel directory. Although I am not a Developer, from what I could grok, it seems like IPv6 might actually be possible using these exact same parameters.

Using Nested ESXi and the new vSphere 7.0 Update 2 feature HTTP Boot over virtual EFI, I was able to setup a quick prototype to validate that you can indeed configure IPv6 using the same ESXi networking parameters, which are applicable to both IPv4 and IPv6.

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