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Quick Tip – Prepare VMware Photon OS for use with vSphere Guest OS Customization and cloud-init

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After publishing my latest article on using the new vSphere 7.0 Update 3 feature vSphere Guest OS Customization  (GOSC) with cloud-init, I came to learn that my blog post was also shared with our Guest OS Customization Engineering team. They reached out sharing their excitement about the blog post and shared one additional nugget when working with VMware Photon OS.

It turns out that VMware Photon OS can also leverage the new vSphere GOSC with cloud-init feature, but a couple of settings must be updated for this to work.


Below are the instructions in preparing VMware Photon OS so that it can leverage the new vSphere GOSC with cloud-init feature.

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Using the new vSphere Guest OS Customization with cloud-init in vSphere 7.0 Update 3

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In vSphere 7.0 Update 3, the vSphere Guest Operating System (OS) Customization Engine has added native support for using cloud-init, which is an industry standard for customizing Linux-based operating systems. This additional GuestOS customization option is currently only available when using the vSphere API, either vSphere SOAP API or vSphere REST API and is not available for consumption when using the vSphere UI.

As part of a recent project, I was exploring some of the customization options and since I had not played with this specific API before, I figured this would be a good exercise. I quickly found that it was not very user intuitive in getting started, especially with the lack of end-to-end examples since this can only be consumed using the vSphere API. I also came across a number of different VMware KBs (here, here and here) that outlined various requirements and constraints when using cloud-init which also added to the confusion.

The high level requirements for using the new vSphere Guest OS Customization with cloud-init is the following:

  • vSphere 7.0. Update 3 or later (vCenter and ESXi)
  • VMware Tools running 11.3 or later
  • cloud-init running 21.1 or later

Note: Although VMware PhotonOS does support cloud-init natively, it is not a supported operating system when using the new vSphere GuestOS Customization with cloud-init due to how cloud-init has been integrated. For customers that require customization via cloud-init with PhotonOS, should continue using either the seed ISO option or the GuestInfo OVF option.

In this blog post, I will explore the complete end-to-end workflow from preparing a GuestOS for customization to applying the actual vSphere customization spec using the new cloud-init option. In addition, I have also created a simple PowerShell script which demonstrates the use of the vSphere REST API on constructing the required specification for using the new cloud-init option and this should hopefully help folks understand how the underlying API works with a working example.

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Heads Up – No healthy upstream error with VEBA vSphere UI plugin with vSphere 7.0 Update 3

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After upgrading my homelab to vSphere 7.0 Update 3, I noticed that my VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) vSphere UI Plugin which is included as part of the VEBA Appliance was no longer functioning properly and would display no healthy upstream error message.


I initially thought this might be environmental, since I had just upgraded from lab from vSphere 7.0 Update 2d to 7.0 Update 3. I had reported the issue to our vSphere UI Engineers who built the VEBA UI plugin and while they were looking into the issue, we had another report from a VEBA user who also was hitting the same issue. Today, I got an update from Engineering and it looks like there was a regression in the Envoy service running in the VCSA which had caused this issue. This issue will be fixed in a future patch update for the VCSA, but in the mean time, VEBA users can apply the workaround outlined below.

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