Plain Virtualization

Yes you hear me right. Check out the vSphere 8.0U3e  release notes . VMware is releasing the ESXi 8.0U3e as an entry-level hypervsor.  To download, head to https://support.broadcom.com/ and create an account if you have not done so.  Follow the screenshot below: Software> VMware Cloud Foundation>My Downloads Next click on Free Software Downloads available HERE. Scroll down to VMware vSphere Hypervisor and click on it. You will be lead to it. You will be able to download it. It will be about 618Mb That is definitely a good news for those who needs it for Home lab testing. But not sure if this going to be a one off. Also to note, it is on a 60 days trial but not sure if it behaviour the same as pre-broadcom after expiry. Thanks to Joey Ware for tipping off in Facebook group.

VMware has release important patches based on the advisory affecting all the hypervisor including ESXi and desktop hypervisor i.e. Workstation and Fusion which contain vulnerabilities that has a CVSSv3 of 7.1-9.3. Most of the listed are all USB related. Most of this might nto affect ESXi since most do not use USB controller on them but more towards the desktop hypervisors. Patches are released fro ESXi 7 and 8 and Workstation 17 and Fusion 13. And since this is a critical severity, VMware has release patches for out of support ESXi 6.5U3v and 6.7U3u for customers on extended support. This also include VCF 3.x that happens to run such version of ESXi.  I hope everyone should have upgraded as a best practice to at least ESXi 7 to avoid such issue where you are not on support and yet running critical workload. If you are still on ESXi 6.5U3v and ESXi 6.7U3u, I would assume you have extended support to tie you through. Do note that if you manage to get the patches from other source wi...

With the announcement of the end of perpetual license for VMware products moving forward, there are also other changes especially in regards to the free ESXi. As per KB on 12th Feb 2024 states, the free ESXi or free vSphere hypervisor is no longer made available. This came as a surprise to me. In fact, many of our home lab and evangelist are using the free hypervisor to learn VMware solution. With this gone, this will definitely affect the fan base and results in many to use alternative. Didn't expected this to come. But understandable that Broadcom might want to stop those who are leveraging on free hypervisor for commercial use. Which I know of some who does. I would rather they change the EULA and make it fully personal license, which mean Broadcom can actually use legal action if found anyone using it for commercial reason.  But sadly, this got to happen. At least the free ESXi has a good run.

Recently recent questions on the impact with license expiry. Especially important when most licensing are going into subscription model. But regardless of the license type, the effect are the same. Let just dive right in. During vSphere 5, I did an article regarding this issue where license expires on vCenter Server. The KB that was describing it has also been removed. The functions are partially working as stated. In fact, in vSphere 5.5, this has been documented . Today with vSphere 7, vCenter Server expiry of license is now shown in the doc . As well for the ESXi Server is documented . It is a now a clear cut that all ESXi hosts will be disconnected which also means no vSphere HA or vSphere DRS will work since this requires the hosts to be managed by vCenter Server. For other solutions, please check the respective documentation of the products to have a better understanding.

Recently the most talk about security measurement against the two discovered vulnerabilities has raised a lot of talks. This all started and revealed by  Google Project Zero . I have also recently shared advice from VMware support and KBs to our Singapore VMUG users during our event yesterday. Below is a summary of questions and the approach you should be doing for patching your VMware environment. Details on Spectre and Meltdown https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/01/what-are-spectre-and-meltdown-and-why-should-you-care/ https://blog.barkly.com/meltdown-spectre-patches-list-windows-update-help Technical explanation:   http://frankdenneman.nl/2018/01/05/explainer-spectre-meltdown-graham-sutherland/ Side Notes ESXi is only affected by Spectre and all patches for ESXi 5.5. and above has been released. Removed due to retracting of code instructed by Intel. Check update below. ESXi is NOT affected by Meltdown as it does not have untrusted user ac...

With vSAN 6.2, the support for ROBO site been introduced.  There have been lots of questions regarding how do we license the witness in a more effective manner.  Some of the thought in using vSphere ROBO licenses, vSphere Essentials licenses, and even free ESXi hypervisor. Here this article is to explain the do-able methods that have not been very clear.  Before we start, check out the vSAN 6.5 Licensing Guide . First of all the common way to place the vSAN Witness are normally in a vSphere cluster.  So this cluster is already licensed.  It doesn't matter if its the lowest Essential Edition to Enterprise Plus Edition.  So if you like to run this even using a vSphere ROBO license, this can be done since ROBO is meant for a small site, not more than 25 VMs.  Do take note that, using vSphere ROBO, you will not be able to power on more than 25 VMs (assuming your license is 25VMs pack and has not been divided).  You cannot combine the license. ...

The threat was first discovered on Workstation during Pwn2Own hacking event.  With further investigation, it is now found possible on ESXi 6.0U1 and above. Do check out the VMware Security Advisories here .  The patches are all available currently. Read about the how this was found during Pwn2Own event on the blog post here .

Many of us always need to or want to do some testing for some solution using vSphere or preparing or some exams e.g. VCAP.  However sometimes you just didn't have enough resources or physical hosts.  Just like me I am running a home lab and would need 1 or 2 extra ESX servers if possible. I find documents around the internet and some are not really updated.  So here I have consolidated to help you better. Do note the places are slightly different for vSphere Client and the vSphere Web Client.  I have provided the screenshots for easy reference. First create a Virtual Machine (doesn't matter which OS you choose as you will not find any ESX server in the drop down list even if you choose Windows, Linux or Other). After creation, in vSphere Client, go to Edit Settings of the virtual machine.  Under Options tab, General Options change your OS.  Here you will find ESXi listed. For Web Client, please see screenshot below:  vSphere Client ...

Yes the official announcement for VSAN has been made.  I was not able to catch as it was 2am Singapore time.  However you can watch the launch recorded video here .   You can read about the release notes here . Do note of a known error which some might encounter when enable VSAN without any disk group and after removal the error message remain persistent.  I admit many like myself so not read release notes. Error Message: "vsan datastore datastore1 in cluster **** in datacenter **** does not have capacity" Cormac Hogan has also did a summary of the launched which is pretty lots of supported feature beyond what was release in beta.  E.g. from 8 nodes to 32 nodes and from 120,000 IOPS to 2 Million IOPS.  Vicardo has done upa nice table here on comparison.  David Hill has a very long table of limit for Public Beta here which I made some correction in my table below: Description Public Beta GA Minimum nodes ...

Have you ever wonder or encounter when asked about network ports requirements for each and individual solutions from VMware?  Whether as a presales, an architect or even a VMware support engineer. No fear!  VMware has just release a very informative network diagram show casing all the network ports and communications in between vSphere and vCloud Director components in a diagram format which makes it easier to understand than just text based. The only catch?  This is based on the current release at the time of writing and likely it would not be updated as frequent so you might have to do your own updating whenever a new release is out. At least it's better than none and going through all the installation guides or KBs would be a killer. Now you can spend more time doing other things. Here is the KB to the network diagram.  This is based on four other KBs as listed: TCP and UDP Ports required to access vCenter Server, ESXi/ESX hosts, and other n...

I was doing my VCP5 studies and was reading the Installation and Setup Guide and came across the below on Page 62. The boot process proceeds as follows. 1 The administrator reboots the host. 2 As the host boots up, Auto Deploy provisions the host with its image and host profile, which are stored in vCenter Server. 3 Virtual machines are brought up or migrated to the host based on the settings of the host. n Standalone host. Virtual machines are powered on according to autostart rules defined on the host. n DRS cluster host. Virtual machines that were successfully migrated to other hosts stay there. Virtual machines for which no host had enough resources are registered to the rebooted host. If the vCenter Server system is unavailable, the host contacts the Auto Deploy server for image profiles and host profiles and the host reboots. However, Auto Deploy cannot set up vSphere distributed switches if vCenter Server is unavailable, and virtual machines are assigned to hosts only if they ...

Export ESXi configuration file After you configured an ESXi host, you can back up the host configuration data. Always back up your host configuration after you change the configuration or upgrade the ESXi image. IMPORTANT The vicfg-cfgbackup command is available only for ESXi hosts. The command is not available for ESX hosts and is not available through a vCenter Server system connection. Requirements: VMware vSphere CLI installed on workstation Open VMware vSphere CLI Command Prompt Type vicfg-cfgbackup.pl -s [backup_file_name] -–server [server_name_or_ip] --username [user_id] e.g. vicfg-cfgbackup.pl –s c:\esx1_20082011.txt –-server 192.168.1.1 –-username root Restore configuration file After you configured an ESXi host, you can back up the host configuration data. Always back up your host configuration after you change the configuration or upgrade the ESXi image. IMPORTANT The vicfg-cfgbackup command is available only for ESXi host...

At time where you need to install update or install drivers on ESXi/ESX servers where new devices like Network cards or HBA drivers are not embedded in the base image. In vSphere 5 you can of cause recompile your own image.  However for existing servers, we would need to learn the commands. Here I have attached the screen shots with steps to do the installation using the VMware vCLI. Requirements: VMware vSphere CLI installed on your workstation which can be found here under VMware vSphere 4.0 CLI VMware vSphere 4.1 CLI VMware vSphere 5 CLI Open VMware vSphere  CLI Command Prompt on workstation.   Check the current Maintenance Mode of the ESXi server by using: vicfg-hostops.pl –operation info –-server   –-username e.g. vicfg-hostops.pl –operation info –-server 192.168.1.1 –-username root   Enter password when prompted. Put ESXi server into maintenance mode by using: vicfg-hostops.pl –operation enter -–server [server_name_o...

This video will demostrate how to upgrade your ESXi or ESXi 4.x server to ESXi 5.0 using the Update Manager 5.0 plug-in on vCenter 5.0.  Procedures to upgrade your vCenter is in the previous post . Tested with ESX 4.x and ESXi 4.x which has a local datastore with VM in it.  Both upgrade with VUM complete successfully with datastore still intact and VM still exist. The only different is that, when you browse the local datastore which was upgraded from ESX 4.x, you will find the esxconsole folder in it which you would not see this if it was upgraded from an ESXi 4.x. Local datastore from ESX 4.x Local datastore from ESXi 4.x Update: Test with local datastore to test if it will be removed. Next Post: vSphere 5 Migration White Paper and Tools  Other related posts: vSphere 5 vRAM Licensing vSphere 5 ESXi 5 Installation Upgrade vSphere vCenter 4.x to 5.0 Upgrade ESX/ESXi 4.x to ESXi 5.0 using Update Manager Upgrade VMware Tools and vir...

The new licensing scheme is used in vSphere 5. Unlike in vSphere 4, where vRAM is not taken into consideration rather the number of cores per socket. Let do a refresh. In vSphere 4, for Enterprise edition is entitled to 6 cores per physical processor per server. For Advanced/Enterprise Plus edition, is entitled to 12 cores per physical processor.  As for the RAM limitation will be 256GB memory per host except Enterprise Plus which is unlimited. An example would be follows: 1 server with 2 physical CPUs, each with 8 cores. This will require 2 x Enterprise Plus license. If you apply 2 x Enterprise instead of Enterprise Plus license, only 6 cores per CPU will be used and 2 cores per CPU left idle. Let's talk about vSphere 5 licensing. Before we begin, vSphere 5 have removed Advanced edition. A customers who is on Advanced Edition on vSphere 4 will be upgrade to vSphere 5 Enterprise. vRAM entitlement is based on an edition per physical CPU (no more limitation of number...