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Quick Tip - Easily identify Virtual Appliances using vSphere API

10.03.2023 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

VMware Virtual Appliances (VA) that are built from either VMware or from our 3rd party eco-system will typically include useful metadata about the solution including name, version, vendor and other details.

Using the vSphere UI, you can locate this information when selecting a VM under Configure->Settings->vApp Options and below is an example for a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA).


Note: If you deploy a VA directly to an ESXi host, these VA properties will not be available as the vApp capability is a vCenter Server feature.

I recently had an inquiry from a customer with over 10K+ VMs that was looking to identify this information and obviously, using the vSphere UI would be a non-starter and was looking for a way to automate this.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, PowerCLI Tags // virtual appliance

Create Windows 11 Virtual Appliance using Tiny 11 with only 2GB memory

02.15.2023 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

I recently came to learn about a really cool project called Tiny 11 which is a stripped down version of Windows 11 Pro 22H2 that can run with just 2GB of memory and 8GB of storage. While you would probably not use this for production workloads, it could be interesting for those with homelabs and can even for demo purposes.

It's finally here!
Based off of Windows 11 Pro 22H2, tiny11 has everything you need for a comfortable computing experience without the bloat and clutter of a standard Windows installation.
https://t.co/yM1Ip2ljjB pic.twitter.com/Tg5PWUZU1Q

— NTDEV (@NTDEV_) February 2, 2023

Disclaimer: Tiny 11 is not an official project from Microsoft, use at your own risk. If you are interested in creating an optimized Windows 10 or 11 image, you can also check out these VMware resources here and here to produce a similiar size image using official Microsoft tools and images.

UPDATE (02/16/23) - There is now an Arm version for Tiny 11, which is great for anyone using the ESXi-Arm Fling and the technique in this blog post would also apply.

🙌 Updated Tiny 11 Arm64 (tiny11a64 r1.iso) now works perfectly with @esxi_arm 💪

Thanks @NTDEV_ for the Arm version & quick fix!#ESXionARM pic.twitter.com/03TV69wMIq

— William Lam (@lamw.bsky.social | @*protected email*) (@lamw) February 16, 2023

After performing a manual installation of Tiny 11, I thought it would be neat if I could build a Virtual Appliance (OVA) for Tiny 11 and also add custom OVF properties, which would allow anyone to customize the OS further without having to rely on any external tooling.

In fact, I had demonstrated this concept back in 2019 using Windows Server 2016 in this blog post and I figure it should be easy enough to also do the same for Tiny 11 or even standard Windows 11! With a bit of trial/error, I was indeed able to create a simple Tiny 11 OVA that includes the following OVF properties as shown in the screenshot below.


My initial goal was to fully automate the building of a Tiny 11 OVA with custom OVF properties using Packer. However, after many attempts, I was not able to figure out the correct autoattended.xml configuration and decided on a semi-manual approach which is detailed in the instructions below. If anyone is able to figure out how to get Tiny 11 installed via Packer, then I may revisit this topic and automate the remainder of the setup.

Note: The instructions below are not specific to Tiny 11 in any way and is also applicable to standard Windows 10 or 11 image.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, Home Lab, OVFTool, PowerCLI, vSphere Tags // homelab, Tiny 11, virtual appliance, windows 11

Packer reference for building PhotonOS Virtual Appliance using OVF properties 

11.25.2019 by William Lam // 3 Comments

I was introduced to HashiCorp Packer several years back by Timo  Tsugliani, who if you are not following on Twitter, you are missing a TON of really useful nuggets which this guys shares both VMware/IT related and cool stuff. I am constantly learning about new things things from Timo and this guys is just a wealth of knowledge if you get the chance to work with him. At the time, I had played with Packer for a bit but did not have an actual use case for it, so I mostly forgot about it.

Fast forward a few years later and with recent projects like the vCenter Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) Fling, I have really spent time learning about Packer in greater depth and I now realize how powerful Packer is for building various artifacts including VMware-based templates that is not only easy but consistently from source control.  It took me awhile to get to the aha moment but now I use Packer for so many different things to help simplify my life.

With the recent open sourcing of our VEBA Fling which includes the use of PhotonOS and Packer, I was reminded of a blog series that I did earlier on how to build your own Linux and/or Windows Virtual Appliance using OVF properties (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). I realized it would have been useful to have an actual reference implementation on building a very simple PhotonOS Virtual Appliance that exercises some basic OVF properties so folks could quickly get started beyond the manual steps that were documented.  I was also motivated by a chat I had with Luc Dekens (Godfather of PowerCLI) last week on some of the Automation he was trying to with PhotonOS and I figured this might be something he and others could also benefit from.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, OVFTool Tags // guestinfo, linux, ova, ovf, Packer, Photon, vapp, virtual appliance

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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.

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Recent

  • Programmatically accessing the Broadcom Compatibility Guide (BCG) 05/06/2025
  • Quick Tip - Validating Broadcom Download Token  05/01/2025
  • Supported chipsets for the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi Fling 04/23/2025
  • vCenter Identity Federation with Authelia 04/16/2025
  • vCenter Server Identity Federation with Kanidm 04/10/2025

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