Author: kevin

One very interesting capability that I had noticed while reading the the latest VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2 release notes are new VCF APIs for auditing PCI Compliance. VCF users can now use a new set of APIs that audit VCF configuration for compliance with 9 relevant PCI-DSS controls In addition to exploring these new…

As someone who is always on the lookout for interesting and clever ways to make the most out of your vSphere homelab investment, I was surprised there has not been more noise about the new NVMe Tiering capability in vSphere 8.0 Update 3!? NVMe Tiering is currently in Tech Preview and it enables ESXi to…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…