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How To Secure Erase ESXi Disks (HPE or Generic Hardware)

Posted by fgrehl on November 12, 2018 2 comments

Since a couple of versions, vSphere comes with an erase function in the GUI. This function deletes all partitions to reuse disks with vSAN for example. However, data is not overwritten and can be restored.

VMware ESXi 6.7 Installation on Intel NUC8i7HNK and NUC8i7HVK

Posted by fgrehl on November 2, 2018 1 comment

When you try to install VMware ESXi 6.7 on the smaller version of the 8th Gen Hades Canyon Intel NUC (NUC8i7HNK), the installer fails to boot with the following error message:

Shutting down firmware services...
Using 'simple offset' UEFI RTS mapping policy

The problem only happens with the NUC8i7HNK, not its larger brother NUC8i7HVK.

It took a couple month and a lot of people were trying to get it up and running (eg. on Reddit) but the problem was finally fixed by Intel within BIOS Version 51.

NUC8i7HNK - Core i7‑8705G - Works with BIOS Version 51
NUC8i7HVK - Core i7‑8809G - Works out of the box

7th Gen NUC Remote Management with KVM using vPro AMT

Posted by fgrehl on May 23, 2018 9 comments

Intel's latest 7th Gen Dawson Canyon NUCs are equipped with AMT vPro Technology. Intel AMT (Active Management Technology) allows remote management including a KVM Console. vPro is available in NUCs with i7 and i5 CPUs. NUCs with i3 CPUs do not have vPro Technology.

7th Gen NUCs with vPro Technology:

NUC7i7DNHE
NUC7i7DNKE
NUC7i5DNHE
NUC7i5DNKE

Activation and access to the Remote Console/KVM are a little bit hidden. This post explains how to enable and use the remote management. Read more »

ESXi on 7th Gen Intel NUC (Kaby Lake - Dawson Canyon)

Posted by fgrehl on May 16, 2018 19 comments

Intel launched a commercial version of their 7th Gen NUCs. The new Dawson Canyon named NUCs are available with vPro technology which allows you to manage NUCs remotely. NUCs are not officially supported by VMware but they are very widespread in many homelabs or test environments. They are small, silent, transportable and have a very low power consumption, making it a great server for your homelab. Generation 7 Dawson Canyon NUCs are available with i3, i5 and i7 CPUs but only i5 and i7 are equipped with IIntel's vPro Technology. The i3 comes without vPro and has an identical CPU than the Baby Canyon. The i7 has a powerful 4 Core Kaby Lake-R CPU which give a great performance boost.

vCenter Service Appliance 6.7 Tips and Tricks

Posted by fgrehl on May 4, 2018 5 comments

VMware is moving their vCenter Server from Windows to the Linux based Photon OS. The following tips and tricks might come handy when working with the vCenter Service Appliance 6.7:

Enable SSH
File Transfer with SCP/SFTP
Public Key Authentication
Disable or Increase Shell Session Timeout
Password expiration
Reset vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 root password
Create a Backup Job
Certificate Warning

Free ESXi 6.7 - How to Download and get License Keys

Posted by fgrehl on May 3, 2018 No comments

vSphere 6.7 has been released and as known from previous versions, VMware provides a free version of their Hypervisor ESXi for everyone again. The license key can be created for free at VMware's website. It has no expiration date. The binaries you will receive as "Free Hypervisor" are 100% identical to the paid version but with some software limitations.

Tech Specs and Limitations

No commercial support (But great community support)
Free ESXi cannot be added to a vCenter Server
Some API functionality is missing
No physical CPU limitation
Number of logical CPUs per host: 480
Maximum vCPUs per virtual machine: 8

Other limitations like the 32GB Memory or 2 CPU Socket limit are no longer in place.

VMware ESXi 6.7 - IO Devices not certified for upgrade

Posted by fgrehl on May 2, 2018 No comments

vmware-hcl-65 Beside Server Hardware, also double check if your IO Devices (eg. NIC, HBA,..) are supported when updating ESXi hosts from VMware vSphere 6.5 to 6.7. The following devices were supported in vSphere 6.5 but are according to VMware's HCL not (yet) supported in vSphere 6.7.

Not supported does not say that it does not work.
The list has been created with the help of my IO-Devices HCL in JSON Format.
Did I miss something? Please comment.

VMware ESXi 6.7 - Hardware not yet certified for upgrade

Posted by fgrehl on May 1, 2018 2 comments

Double check your vendor support when updating ESXi hosts from to vSphere 6.7. Some systems have not been certified by their vendor yet. The following servers were supported in vSphere 6.5 but are according to VMware's HCL not yet supported in vSphere 6.7.

Your server is listed and you want to upgrade?

Usually, the list gets smaller a couple of weeks after a new vSphere version has been released. I will update this post when I notice changes.
Not supported does not say that it does not work.
Servers get certified by their vendor, not VMware. If you want a server to get certified, ask your vendor.
Vendor support matrices sometimes differ from VMware HCL. Please ask your vendor or VMware whether you are allowed to upgrade.
The list has been created with the help of my HCL in JSON Format.
Follow the comments to get notified of updates.
Did I miss something? Please comment.

Read more »

VMware vSphere 6.7 Configuration Maximums Changes

Posted by fgrehl on April 30, 2018 No comments

VMware vSphere 6.7 offers increased scalability. You can see a comparison against all previous versions at my ESX and vCenter Configuration Maximums page. Changes in VMware vSphere 6.7 are:

Virtual Machine Maximums

	vSphere 6.7	vSphere 6.5	vSphere 6.0
NVDIMM controllers	1	N/A	N/A
Non-volatile Memory	1 TB	N/A	N/A
Virtual SCSI targets per virtual SCSI adapter	64	15	15
Virtual SCSI targets per Virtual Machine	256	64	64
Virtual RDMA Adapters per Virtual Machine	1	N/A	N/A

ESXi Host Maximums

	vSphere 6.7	vSphere 6.5	vSphere 6.0
Maximum Non-volatile memory per host	1 TB	N/A	N/A
Logical CPUs per host	768	576	480
Maximum RAM per host	16 TB	12 TB	12 TB
Number of total paths on a server	4096	2048	1024
LUNs per server	1024	512	256
Volumes per host	1024	512	256

Fault Tolerance Maximums

	vSphere 6.7	vSphere 6.5	vSphere 6.0
Virtual CPUs per virtual machine	8	4	4
Virtual Memory per virtual machine	128 GB	64 GB	64 GB

vCenter Server Maximums

	vSphere 6.7	vSphere 6.5	vSphere 6.0
Hosts in linked vCenter Servers	5000	4000	4000
Powered on virtual machines in linked vCenter	50000	30000	30000
Registered virtual machines in linked vCenter	70000	50000	50000

Homelab - Will ESXi 6.7 run on Intel NUC?

Posted by fgrehl on April 27, 2018 17 comments

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7 is here and while you might want to wait before you upgrade your production, it's time to explore the new features in your Homelab. I've received a few questions on whether it is safe to upgrade.