I know many of you have been pinging me the last couple of days for an updated Nested ESXi 6.7 Virtual Appliance and I have just finished my strict quality control process 🙂 The only minor change with the 6.7 appliance is the VM is now configured with EFI Firmware, where as in the past it was set to BIOS. As of vSphere 6.5+ appliances, the customization scripts are automatically removed by default which means that customers can turn on Secure Boot feature post-deployment without having to perform any manual workarounds. In addition, you will find a few more updates related to the updated ESXi appliance below. I hope you enjoy these free resources to help learn and plan for your vSphere 6.7 upgrades, Happy Friday!
Note: These solutions are all developed during off hours and does take a considerable amount of time/effort to manage and update. Although they are provided to you as a free solution, the development itself is not 🙂
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Nested ESXi 6.7 Appliance:
ESXi 6.7 Virtual Appliance (Nested_ESXi6.7_Appliance_Template_v1.ova)
Nested ESXi Content Library
If you are using my Nested ESXi Content Library, I have updated it to include the latest 6.7 Appliance. Simply refresh your Content Library to automatically pull down the image or you can create a new Content Library by subscribing to the following URL: https://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/lib.json For more details, please take a look at this blog post here.
vGhetto vSphere Automated Lab Deployment:
For those that use my vGhetto lab deployment script to automate a fully functional vSphere environment, I have created a new version of the script to support vSphere 6.7 which you can find more details here. One neat feature that was suggested by Christian Mohn awhile back was the ability to get more insights to what is happening during the VCSA deployment since the verbosity can be quite distracting on the primary screen. There is now a new $enableVerboseLoggingToNewShell variable that is enabled by default to spawn a new PowerShell console that will watch the VCSA installer logs, so you have a better idea of what is going on.
Blake Garner (@trodemaster) says
04/20/2018 at 9:40 amThank you!!!
virtual_vic (@Virtual_Vic) says
04/24/2018 at 12:18 pmAs always bro, great job! On behalf of the entire community, thank you. Dilly dilly!! ????
GCR says
05/17/2018 at 1:21 pmAny way to workaround of the 6.7 cpu limitation (remove support for old CPUs) on nested environments? Some CPU mask perhaps…?
Christian Amtoft Hansen says
06/21/2018 at 3:22 amHi william.
Im trying to deploy the 6.7 image, but im getting an error with “file is too large”.
[06-21-2018_10:38:37] Deploying Nested ESXi VM vesxi67-1 …
Import-VApp : 21-06-2018 10:38:40 Import-VApp The file is too large
i just downloaded the ova from your site.
Richard Chu says
08/27/2018 at 1:05 amHi William,
How can I change the disk size with your nested esxi appliance via ovftool?
BTW, I can not built a new nested esxi appliance by myself? Could you tell me some tips for me?
Ryan Robb says
01/11/2019 at 7:03 amHi William,
Trying to use the 6.7u1 template with 14.1.5 workstation pro. Getting an error, invalid target disk adapter type: pvscsi.
I probably missed the requirements to use them with vmware workstation but thought I’d at least ask.
Thanks for everything you do for the community!
William Lam says
01/14/2019 at 7:41 amI guess the issue on Fusion/Workstation hasn’t been resolved but they don’t support the PVSCSI adapter type (hence the error). You’ll need to convert the OVA to and OVF and then update it to use LSILogic which should work (you’ll have to look up the ID as I forget off hand)
prettynoose71 says
04/26/2019 at 9:00 pmI might have missed this but what is the default login and password for the Nested ESXi 6.7 Virtual Appliance
Stewart Hardy says
01/17/2019 at 6:32 pm? Will VMware support Nested ESXi 6.7 appliance
William Lam says
01/18/2019 at 6:32 amNo, Nested Virtualization and Nested ESXi is NOT supported by VMware
Azlan Syah says
02/15/2019 at 2:02 amI got this error, when deploying:
Would you share any steps to fix it?
————————————————————–
[02-14-2019_08:31:56] Creating VCSA JSON Configuration file for deployment …
[02-14-2019_08:31:56] Deploying VCSA …
Error: Problem Id: None Component key: fb-infra Detail:
The installation of vCenter Server failed due to an internal error.
Resolution: This is an unrecoverable error, please retry install. If you
encounter this error again, please search for these symptoms in the VMware
Knowledge Base for any known issues and possible resolutions. If none can be
found, collect a support bundle and open a support request.
Error message: com.vmware.vcsa.installer.monitor.monitor_vcsa_deployment: The
VCSA deployment has failed VCSA Deployment Start Time: 2019-02-14T08:47:51.509Z
VCSA Deployment End Time: 2019-02-14T11:10:36.837Z
[02-14-2019_11:03:53] Disconnecting from 192.168.100.149 …
Ron Flax says
03/05/2019 at 11:50 amWilliam, is there an easy way to update or patch these ESXi virtual appliances? NSX-T 2.4 requires an image that is patched to EP 06 in order to successfully deploy its vibs. Better yet, is there a write up on how exactly you created these virtual appliances in the first place? I’m happy to do it myself, I just need to know the magic. I tried patching the 6.7u1 image and exporting an OVF, but the vmdk’s are now an aggregate of about 3G instead of 400K in size, so I’m definitely doing something wrong.
Diljit says
04/09/2019 at 12:21 pmHello William,
Great article. Thanks for everything. I was wondering how to pass through the disks on the nested esxi to nested virtual machines ? Have you tried before ? Any idea how we can achieve that ?
Larry Chan says
05/01/2019 at 10:07 pmThe Virtual Machines I create on the Nested ESXi appliance doesn’t seem to have network connectivity. Any idea why?
The ESXi appliance definitely is accessible since I can add it to vCenter and manage it like normal. But any VM’s those I create new or those I clone to it, have no network access.