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Nested ESXi installation using HTTPS boot over VirtualEFI in vSphere 8

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In vSphere 7.0 Update 2, an enhancement was made to the Virtual Machine's UEFI firmware called VirtualEFI that would enable ESXi to run in a VM (Nested ESXi) and perform an HTTP Boot given the ESXi bootloader URL without requiring any traditional PXE infrastructure.

This was especially useful for anyone testing or developing ESXi automation for use with ESXi Kickstart, where you can quickly prototype your automation without additional infrastructure dependencies and once the automation has been vetted, you can then leverage that exact same automation in your physical ESXi provisioning infrastructure.

The original solution had only supported HTTP and I recently came to learn that we can now also support HTTPS in vSphere 8!

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ACPI motherboard layout requires EFI - Considerations for switching VM firmware in vSphere 8 

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One of the important settings to consider when creating a new Virtual Machine in vSphere is the VM firmware, which can either be BIOS or EFI and can be configured under VM Options->Boot Options->Firmware. After selecting the desired guest operating system (GOS) in vSphere, the system will default to a recommended firmware type and can also be overridden by the user. Ultimately, the selection of the VM firmware should be determined by what your GOS supports.

If you ever need to change the VM firmware, you typically will need to re-install the GOS because it does not understand the new firmware change (just like in a physical server) and more than likely the GOS will also not boot due to this change and this is the existing behavior from GOS point of view.

For a net new VM creation, prior to vSphere 8, if you had configured a VM using EFI firmware and you have not installed a GOS and realized that you had made a mistake and needed to change the VM firmware to BIOS, you could easily do so using the vSphere UI or API and then install your OS. In vSphere 8 and specifically when using the latest Virtual Machine Compatibility (vHW20), you can not just switch the VM firmware after the initial VM creation, especially if you had started with EFI firmware and wish to change it to BIOS.

In doing so, you will come across the following error message:

ACPI motherboard layout requires EFI. Failed to start the virtual machine. Module DevicePowerOnEarly power on failed.

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Simplified Nested ESXi installation in ESXi 7.0 Update 2 using HTTP Boot over VirtualEFI

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Deploying an ESXi scripted installation aka Kickstart running within a VM (Nested ESXi) has a number of benefits, especially for testing and development purposes. This was something I did regularly as a customer, especially with new releases of ESXi to ensure our existing automation scripts and processes continued to work before rolling out into production. ESXi kickstart itself is pretty straight forward, but the required supporting infrastructure (PXE Server, DHCP, TFTP, etc) that needs to be configured, especially for a greenfield deployment can often be challenging for new comers.

Even with an existing PXE infrastructure, it can often be difficult to configure or troubleshoot depending on your level of access which does not add any value in actually testing or automating the ESXi scripted installation process. In ESXi 7.0 Update 2, an enhancement was made to the Virtual Machine's UEFI firmware called VirtualEFI that would enable ESXi to perform an HTTP Boot given the ESXi bootloader URL and without requiring any of the traditional PXE infrastructure.

To take advantage of this new capability, you just need to have a physical server running ESXi 7.0 Update 2 and a VM that is configured with the latest vHW19 compatibility. To configure HTTP boot, you will need to add the following two VM Advanced Settings:

  • networkBootProtocol - httpv4 or httpv6
  • networkBootUri - HTTP URL to the ESXi bootloader (bootx64.efi)

Disclaimer: Nested ESXi and Nested Virtualization is not officially supported by VMware

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