VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2 had just GA’ed last week and it is a packed release with a ton of new capabilities! Creating a brand new VCF environment (greenfield) is generally much easier than converting an existing vSphere-based environment (brownfield) into a compliant VCF environment, which can be quite challenging and our users have been…
Month: July 2024
Quick Tip – VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2 provisioning fails with Update SDDC Manager with Licensing Information
Since the introduction of the License Later feature with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.1.1, I typically deploy my VCF lab without needing any license keys and simply take advantage of the built-in 60 day evaluation period. I was doing some testing recently with the latest VCF 5.2 release, which had just GA’ed last week and…
Auditing vGPU Profile Reconfigurations in vSphere
vCenter Server Events are extremely powerful and contains a ton of useful information, especially for auditing and compliance purposes. As of vSphere 8.0 Update 3, there are over 2.1K+ out of the box events with many more through 2nd and 3rd party integrations. One of my favorite vCenter Server Event is the VmReconfiguredEvent as it…
Easily audit ESXi boot options programmatically in vSphere 8.0 Update 3
ESXi (kernel) boot options can be added during ESXi boot up (by pressing SHIFT+O) or by updating the ESXi boot.cfg configuration to influence specific configurations and/or behaviors. In the past, it was difficult to get visibility across your fleet of ESXi hosts on which hosts might be using custom boot options, especially in cases where…
Quick Tip – Disable network traffic monitoring (promiscuous) UI prompt in VMware Fusion
While working on some demos planned for my VMware Explore session, Tech Deep Dive: Automating VMware ESXi Installation At Scale [CODEB1574LV], I kept getting this network monitoring prompt when powering up my Nested ESXi VM running in VMware Fusion. Since Nested ESXi requires the use of promiscuous mode (for inner-VM networking), you will be prompted…
Useful vSphere Automation techniques for assisting with CrowdStrike remediation
By now, you have probably heard about or have directly been impacted by the recent CrowdStrike software update to Microsoft Windows system causing an unprecedented global outage. I know IT administrators are working around the clock to remediate thousands if not tens of thousands of Windows systems, the current recommended remediation process from CrowdStrike is…
Slick Jonsbo D31 computer case with embedded LCD screen for homelab
Last month, I noticed a very interesting DIY (Do it Yourself) computer build from fellow colleague Cyprien Laplace, who you might know from the ESXi-Arm team. No surprise, the build was for a new ESXi-Arm homelab using an ASRock Ampere Altra (ALTRAD8UD-1L2T) and configured with 64 CPUs and 128GB of memory! 🔥 first boot of…
Automating the retrieval & reclamation of VM MAC address blocklist for vCenter Server using the vSphere MOB
As shared in this blog post HERE and HERE, vCenter Server has a built-in mechanism for managing VM MAC addresses where the original VM has been migrated to a different vCenter Server (regardless of the vCenter SSO Domain) using a VM MAC Address blocklist. The VM MAC address blocklist functionality is still only available using…
Managing vSAN internet connectivity configuration using the vSAN API
I recently received an inquiry from a vSAN customer who was looking to disable the vSAN internet connectivity, which is used pull down the latest vSAN HCL catalog updates and is also used as part of enabling the vSAN File Services. Rather than using the vSphere UI to disable this configuration, the customer was interested…
Improved vSAN capacity usage reporting APIs in vSphere 8.0 Update 3
As with any new VMware software release, I always love geeking out and taking a look at the new APIs have been added and/or updated that can benefit our users. Having spent some time automating various aspects of vSAN, I came across a couple of new vSAN capacity usage reporting APIs (vSphere API & vSAN…