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March 2015

VMware ESXi 6.0 - Unsupported Hardware

hcl-60Double check your vendor support when updating ESXi hosts from VMware vSphere 5.5 to 6.0. There are a lot of systems that are no longer supported. The following servers were supported in 5.5 but are according to the VMware HCL no longer supported in vSphere 6.0.

Your server is listed and you want to upgrade? Don't panic.

  • 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 mean 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 and VMware HCL have some mismatches at the moment (HP and IBM). Servers are listed at the bottom. Please ask your vendor or VMware if you are allowed to upgrade.
  • Did I miss something? Please comment.

Last Update: May 2, 2018

Read More »VMware ESXi 6.0 - Unsupported Hardware

Free ESXi 6.0 - How to Download and get License Keys

vSphere 6.0 has been released and VMware provides a free version of their Hypervisor ESXi for everyone again. The license key can be created for free at VMwares website. It has no expiration date. The binaries you will receive as "Free Hypervisor" are 100% identical to the paid version.

Limitations

  • No support
  • Free ESXi cannot be added to a vCenter Server
  • 2 physical CPUs
  • Unlimited cores per CPU
  • Unlimited physical Memory
  • max. 8 vCPU per VM

Read More »Free ESXi 6.0 - How to Download and get License Keys

New Free Tool: VMware Software Manager

Together with vSphere 6.0, VMware released a new free tool that simplifies the download of VMware suites and products. The tool is very simple, its totally worth giving it a try. Install it on your desktop, login with your My VMware account and download all products and features of a VMware Suite with on button.

Software Manager Download Page

This is how it looks like:
VMware-Software-Manager-website

Read More »New Free Tool: VMware Software Manager

ESXi 6.0 - ESXCLI Command Mindmap

In vSphere 6.0 the command line interface esxcli has 2 new namespaces. The esxcli is a complete set of commands that you can use for troubleshooting, configuration or kickstart files. I have created and printed a mindmap to navigate through the namespaces more quickly. This post covers only basic namespaces, available on all ESXi 6.0 hosts. If you've installed additional software you might see more namespaces. I've also created a mindmap for ESXi 5.1 and ESXi 5.5.

ESXCLI in version 6.0 has 15 namespaces:Read More »ESXi 6.0 - ESXCLI Command Mindmap

vSphere 6.0 - New ESXCLI Namespaces

In vSphere 6.0 the command line interface esxcli has been extended by the new features. This post introduces the new and extended namespaces. Remarkable changes in esxcli version 6.0.0 are:

  • Local user management with the system.account namespace
  • Certificate Store management with the system.security.certificatestore namespace
  • Virtual Volumes management with the storage.vvol namespace
  • Remote direct memory access management with the rdma namespace
  • The network.fence namespace has been removed
  • The network.vswitch.dvs.vmware.vxlan namespace has been removed

esxcli-vsphere-60

Read More »vSphere 6.0 - New ESXCLI Namespaces

Can I Upgrade ESXi 6.0 Beta/RC to ESXi 6.0 GA?

There are many 6.0 Beta and RC versions running at the moment. With the vSphere 6.0 going GA today a question came up on upgrading Beta software to GA software.

From the vSphere Documentation, this upgrade is not supported:

You can upgrade an ESXi 5.0.x, ESXi 5.1.x, ESXi 5.5.0, or ESXi 5.5.х host directly to 6.0.

supported-upgrade-esxi-60

Despite it is unsupported, you can actually upgrade ESXi 6.0 RC to ESXi 6.0 GA. I would not recommend doing this in production, but it works:Read More »Can I Upgrade ESXi 6.0 Beta/RC to ESXi 6.0 GA?

Get Notified About New VMware Products

If you want to stay up to date with VMware product releases (vSphere 6 GA is close) you might find vTracker useful. vTracker is a service provided by virten.net that watches for VMware releases. All products are listed at this site. There is also a RSS Feed with daily updates when new product versions are available.

Why this?
You can subscribe to product updates in the profile section at my.vmware.com, but this actually does not work for me. I subscribed to all products, but never got mails. Beyond that I prefer a RSS feeds, instead of emails.
my-vmware-product subscriptions

Read More »Get Notified About New VMware Products