WilliamLam.com

  • About
    • About
    • Privacy
  • VMware Cloud Foundation
  • VKS
  • Homelab
    • Hardware Options
    • Hardware Reviews
    • Lab Deployment Scripts
    • Nested Virtualization
    • Homelab Podcasts
  • VMware Nostalgia
  • Apple

Project USB to SDDC - Part 2

04.13.2017 by William Lam // 1 Comment

In the previous article, I provided some background on the origin of the project. In this article, we will now focus on the technical details and how the solution actually works.

Hardware

This solution was originally developed against an Intel NUC but I had designed it to be generic so that it could run on any system which meets the minimum requirements which is just having two disks (HDD & SSD or two SSDs) which is used to create a vSAN datastore.

Here is the BOM for the Intel NUC that we had used:

  • 1 x Intel NUC 6th Gen NUC6i3SYH (supports 2 drives: M.2 & 2.5)
  • 2 x Crucial 16GB DDR4
  • 1 x Samsung SM951 NVMe 128GB M.2 for "Caching" Tier
  • 1 x Samsung 850 EVO 500GB 2.5 SATA3 for “Capacity” Tier

During the Sydney VMUG, we had did a live demo using an Intel NUC. Prior to the Melbourne VMUG, fellow VMware colleague Tai Ratcliff reached out and offered to let us borrow his Supermicro kit for the demo which was great as the hardware was much beefier than the NUC. Thanks Tai!


I had already been hearing great things about E200-8D platform but I had not had the opportunity to get my hands on the system to play with. After only spending a little bit of time with the platform while prepping for the VMUG event, I can see why is a pretty slick system for a vSphere/vSAN based home lab, especially if you need to go beyond 32GB of memory which is where the Intel NUCs currently max out at.

The other appealing features for this platform is that it comes with 2x10GbE, 2x1GBe and an IPMI interface for remote management which is a huge benefit for not needing to connect an external monitor and keyboard. The system is also Xeon based w/6-Cores and can go all the way up to 128GB of memory. Tai had also recently published a blog article comparing the Supermicro E200-8D and the Intel NUC, which I think is worth a read if you are deciding between these two platforms.

Note: If you are considering purchasing the Supermicro E200-8D or any other system for that matter, check out this exclusive vGhetto discount here.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, ESXi, Home Lab, VCSA, VSAN, vSphere 6.5 Tags // Docker, Photon, usb, VSAN, vSphere 6.5

Project USB to SDDC - Part 1

04.05.2017 by William Lam // 2 Comments

A couple of weeks back, Alan Renouf and I co-presented at the Sydney and Melbourne VMUG UserCon, here are some great write-ups about the events here and here. We were very honored to have been invited out and to also deliever the closing keynote. Having traveled halfway around the world, we thought it was only fitting to share something really special.

For the last couple of months, we had been working on a small pet project that I personally had been referring to as the "vGhetto SDDC". This was not something we had not shared with anyone before and thought the VMUG UserCon was the perfect venue to demo our new project. For the session, we decided to rename the project/session to USB to SDDC (better ring than the previous title) which might give you a hint on what the project might be about.

The inception for this project really stemmed from the work we did at last years VMworld Hackathon which was another idea that both Alan and I had came up and worked with the VMware Code team to deliver at both VMworld US and Europe. Like all great Automation stories, the motivation for this project was born out of pure laziness. With the huge success of the Hackathon at VMworld US, there was a huge demand for us to also deliver it again at VMworld Europe.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, ESXi, Home Lab, VCSA, VSAN, vSphere, vSphere 6.5 Tags // Docker, ESXi 6.5, Photon, usb, VSAN, vSphere 6.5

'System.Management.Automation.ConfigPropertyAccessor' exception when launching PowerCLI Core in Linux firstboot script

01.03.2017 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

Happy New Years everyone!

I just got back into the swing of things after taking some much needed time off over the holiday break. While catching up on my email, I also re-visited one of my pet projects I had been working on right before the break. I needed to launch a specific PowerCLI script upon firstboot from a Linux system, specifically PhotonOS leveraging PowerCLICore. My first few attempts had failed and in troubleshooting the issue further, I found the following cryptic error message in the system logs:

The shell cannot be started. A failure occurred during initialization:
The type initializer for 'System.Management.Automation.ConfigPropertyAccessor' threw an exception.

After a bit of Googling, I found the following Github PR which seems to indicate that the HOME environmental variable may not properly configured or readable by Powershell. The quick fix was to simply define the HOME directory within the shell script that starts up the PowerCLI script.

Below is a snippet of what I needed to add to /etc/rc.d/rc.local to automatically run my PowerCLI script:

export HOME=/root

/usr/bin/powershell -File /root/MyPowerCLI-Script.ps1

The following command was also useful in troubleshooting and verifying that my PowerCLI script had properly executed since there was no output in my script log:

journalctl --no-pager | grep rc.local

Categories // Automation, PowerCLI Tags // linux, Photon, PowerCLICore

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • …
  • 9
  • Next Page »

Search

Thank Author

Author

William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

Connect

  • Bluesky
  • Email
  • GitHub
  • LinkedIn
  • Mastodon
  • Reddit
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo

Recent

  • Ultimate Lab Resource for VCF 9.0 06/25/2025
  • VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) on ASUS NUC 15 Pro (Cyber Canyon) 06/25/2025
  • VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) on Minisforum MS-A2 06/25/2025
  • VCF 9.0 Offline Depot using Synology 06/25/2025
  • Deploying VCF 9.0 on a single ESXi host? 06/24/2025

Advertisment

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Copyright WilliamLam.com © 2025

 

Loading Comments...