ESXi 2 - Mike Tabor

VMware vSphere 6.0 Update 1 available
September 16, 2015 VMware
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VMware has released vSphere 6.0 Update 1, ESXi 6.0 U1 and updates for several other VMware products:
- VMware vCenter Server 6.0 Update 1 Release notes / Download
- VMware ESXi 6.0 U1 Release notes / Download
- VMware Data Protection 6.1 Update 1 Release notes / Download
- VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1 Release notes / Download
- VMware vCloud Director 8.0 Release notes / Download
- VMware vRealize Automation 6.2.3 Release notes / Download
- VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.1.0 Release notes / Download
- VMware vRealize Orchestrator Appliance 6.0.3 Release notes / Download
- VMware vSphere Data Protection 6.1 Release notes / Download
- VMware vSphere Replication 6.1 Release notes / Download
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How to easily add an ESXi SSH login message banner
July 16, 2015 VMware
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Preparing for some upcoming audits, I noticed one of the checkpoints was to ensure each ESXi host was configured with a warning banner stating the machine is being monitored and audited when someone logs into the ESXi host via SSH. This type of message is something you see on most any company or government computer before you login.

There are two message types that can be used to achieve this, the first being login banner (/etc/issue) and MOTD (/etc/motd). The difference between the two are where they are shown. The login banner is shown between the username and password inputs during login, while the MOTD is displayed after a user has successfully logged into SSH.

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VMware ESXi 6.0 CBT bug fix released
May 15, 2015May 15, 2015 VMware
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You may remember ESXi 4.x-5.x had a CBT bug, as mentioned here, that could potentially cause your backups to be pretty useless. Well it seems ESXi 6.0 isn’t without it’s own CBT bug which could cause the following to possibly occur:
- Backing up a VM with CBT enabled fails.
- Powering on virtual machines fails.
- Expanding the size of a virtual disk fails.
- Taking VM quiesced snapshots fails.
Prior to the fix, the workaround was to disable CBT. Thankfully VMware has released a fix for the ESXi 6.0 CBT bug and it’s recommended that anyone who uses CBT apply this patch regardless if it was a clean install of VMware ESXi 6.0 or an upgrade to ESXi 6.0.

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Easy ESXi 6.0 upgrade via command line
April 10, 2015July 9, 2020 VMware
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VMware has released ESXi 6.0 back in March and I recently posted a guide on how to upgrade your vCenter Server Appliance from 5.x to 6.0 – Now we’re going to look at two ways to upgrade a VMware ESXi 5.x host to ESXi 6.0 via command line.

The first method will show you how to have each ESXi host download the update directly from VMware and then upgrade itself while the second method shows how to download the update, place it on a datastore accessible to the host, then upgrade the host.

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Intel NUC i5 5th Generation an ESXi lab improvement
March 12, 2015March 6, 2017 Home Lab
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For the past year and a half I’ve been using the Intel i5 3rd Gen NUC’s in my ESXi home lab with great success. In this time several people have asked if I recommend anything newer, and while Intel had a few 4th gen models I wasn’t really sold on them as most CPU benchmarks put them the same as my 3rd gen or lower and only added support for a 2.5″ drive which at the time I didn’t need but then Intel released news about several Intel NUC 5th generation models!

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vShield driver renamed to Guest Introspection driver
February 5, 2015February 4, 2015 VMware
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A component found in the VMware Tools called vShield drivers, which is used to accommodate agent-less antivirus solutions such as McAfee MOVE has been renamed from “vShield drivers” to “Guest Introspection driver”.

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VMUG EVALExperience, the new VMware VMTN
January 15, 2015October 15, 2015 VMware
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Long ago VMware offered a program called VMware Technology Network (VMTN) which was very similar to Microsoft’s TechNet, which allowed you to download and run various VMware software within your home lab for a small yearly fee. Just like the Microsoft TechNet, the VMware VMTN program was eventually closed. From the time the VMTN program closed many people have begged and pleaded with VMware to bring the program back, there is even a long forum thread asking VMware to bring VMTN back. Though it never did… until now.

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VMware ESXi 5 fails to install on Intel NUC, “No Network Adapters” error
December 9, 2014March 12, 2015 Home Lab
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If you use the VMware ESXi 5 ISO image and try to install it on an Intel NUC you’ll receive the following error during the install.

No Network Adapters

No network adapters were detected. Either no network adapters are physically connected to the system, or a suitable driver could not be located. A third party driver my be required.

Ensure that there is at least one network adapter physically connected to the system before attempting installation. If the problem persists, consult the VMware Knowledge Base.

The “No Network Adapters” on the Intel NUC error message during the ESXi install is because VMware removed a number of drivers (non-enterprise drivers) from their ESXi 5.x image and in order to use the Intel NUC as an ESXi host you need to create a customized ESXi image with the NIC drivers added to the image.

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How to add Realtek R8168 to ESXi 5.5 Update 2 ISO
September 17, 2014December 9, 2014 Home Lab
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Over the past weekend I was working on a whitebox ESXi host and wanted to upgrade it to ESXi 5.5 Update 2 from an older version of ESXi 5.1 using a realtek R8168 network card. While I could have performed an in place upgrade, such as via command line, a clean install was preferred. However, VMware has removed a number of NIC drivers from ESXi 5.x and trying to install with the base ESXi image would result in a “No Network Adapters” error during install.

In order to do a clean install you have to re-add the Realtek R8168 NIC drivers back into the ESXi 5.5 image, otherwise a NIC will not be found and thus ESXi will not install. These are the steps to easily re-add the Realtek R8168 drivers into ESXi 5.5 ISO by making a custom ESXi 5.5 image.

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VMware vSphere 5.5 Update 2 released
September 9, 2014September 16, 2014 VMware
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VMware vCenter Server and ESXi 5.5 Update 2 has just been released today with a number of fixes and additional features such as vCenter Server database support for Oracle 12c, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1, and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 in vCenter Server and support for ESXi hosts with 6TB of RAM in the ESXi 5.5 update 2 release!

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