I had a question the other day asking whether the encrypted password which can be specified within an ESXi Kickstart file (denoted by the –isencrypted flag) can use a different hashing algorithm other than MD5? The answer is absolutely yes. In fact, MD5 as a default hashing algorithm has NOT been used for a number […]
Leveraging Instant Clone in vSphere 6.7 for extremely fast Nested ESXi provisioning
The idea of “Instant Cloning” a Nested ESXi VM (running ESXi in a VM) is not a new concept. In fact, I had shared a solution back in 2015 using the private VMFork APIs. However, what has changed is the ease of consumption, primarily due to the re-architecture of Instant Clone in vSphere 6.7 (more details here and […]
Changes to vSphere Client Login UI customizations in vSphere 6.7
For those that have customized their vSphere Client Login UI using the instructions here and here, it looks like the process can not be applied to the vSphere 6.7 release. From what I can tell, it looks like we have now consolidated the various WAR files into a single file /usr/lib/vmware-sso/vmware-sts/webapps/ROOT.war. The original contents of the websso directory, which […]
New Instant Clone Architecture in vSphere 6.7 – Part 2
In the previous article, I provided an overview of the new “Parentless” Instant Clone feature which was introduced in vSphere 6.7 and some of the architectural differences between prior versions of Instant Clone. In this post, I will show you how to use the new Instant Clone feature, which is currently only available with the vSphere […]
VM Creation Date now available in vSphere 6.7
Last year, I wrote about a new Virtual Machine API property called createDate which provides customers a method of retrieving the original creation date and time of a VM. This vSphere API was first introduced in VMware Cloud on AWS and with the release of vSphere 6.7, it is also now available for on-premises customers to consume. I […]