In the past, I have written about various ways of "bootstrapping" vCenter Server (here and here) which can be useful for setting up greenfield vSphere deployments. This topic has always been of interest to me because it can be the most challenging to solve, especially when you only start out with a single ESXi host. Historically, these "bootstrapping" options have mostly been driven from a CLI standpoint which is not a bad thing when you think about it from an Automation standpoint and needing to replicate this a few dozen times. However, from a user experience point of view, it may not be as ideal, especially if this is an infrequent task. One of the other cool features of the ESXi Embedded Host Client (EHC) which recently had its v4 release is that it can be used to deploy Virtual Appliances stored in the OVF format.
Deploying Nested ESXi is even easier now with the ESXi Virtual Appliance
Several months back I had built an ESXi Virtual Appliance that allows anyone to quickly stand up a fully functional Nested ESXi VM which includes guest customization such as networking, NTP, syslog, passwords, etc. The virtual appliance was initially built for my own personal use as I found myself constantly rebuilding my lab environment for evaluating and breaking new VMware software. I figured if this was useful for myself, it probably could benefit others at VMware and I posted the details internally on our Socialcast forum. Since then, I have received numerous stories on how helpful the ESXi Virtual Appliance has been for both our Field and Engineering for setting up demos, POCs, evaluations, etc.
How to deploy and run the VSAN 6.1 Witness Virtual Appliance on VMware Fusion & Workstation?
One of the most exciting new feature in VSAN 6.1 is the new Stretched Clustering capability which also provides support for a 2-Node ROBO deployment. If you are interested in learning more about the new VSAN 6.1 capabilities, be sure to check out Duncan's blog post here as well as a video on how to configure the new VSAN Stretched Clustering here. Like many of you, I am sure you are looking forward to giving both vSphere 6.0 Update 1 as well as the new VSAN 6.1 capabilities a spin in your home lab or development environment. By now, you probably know how easy it is to run Nested ESXi on top of your existing vSphere environment. However, not everyone has access to a vSphere environment. The next best thing is using VMware Fusion and Workstation which also supports Nested ESXi and for many of our customers and field, it is a great solution as it allows you to easily play with all the VMware goodies while you are on the go, especially useful if you travel frequently.
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