virtuallyGhetto

vSphere 7.0

Is vSphere with Kubernetes available for evaluation? 

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Yes. Given the frequency that this question has come up, I thought it would be useful to share some more details on how you can start playing with the new vSphere with Kubernetes (K8s) capability which was introduced as part of the vSphere 7.0 release. vSphere w/K8s requires NSX-T and although vSphere (ESXi and vCenter Server Appliance) has supported a 60 day evaluation period, NSX-T historically did not support any self-service evaluation. In addition, there were also some confusion in how vSphere w/K8s was bundled today from a packaging standpoint which is offered as part of the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.0 SKU.

Putting aside the pricing and packaging aspects, customers can indeed evaluate vSphere w/K8s using one of the following two options below:

Option 1: 60 Day Eval

Sign up for the vSphere 7.0 (ESXi & VCSA) evaluation (https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=vsphere-eval-7) and NSX-T 3.0 evaluation (https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=nsx-t-eval). After signing up you will receive evaluation keys that can be used when setting up vSphere w/K8s. If you want to quickly go from 0 to Kubernetes, be sure to check out my vSphere with K8s Automation Lab Deployment which can give you a running environment in under 30min!

Option 2: 365 Day Eval

Sign up for VMUG Advantage which includes VMUGEval that provides licenses for vSphere 7.0, NSX-T 3.0, VCF 4.0 and many other VMware products for an entire year for non-production usage. After signing up you will receive license keys that will be valid for 1 year which can then be used when setting up vSphere w/K8s. With VMUG Advantage, you can consume vSphere w/K8s the "manual" method, using my vSphere with K8s Automation Lab Deployment or using SDDC Manager which is part of VCF 4.0 to automatically deployed the required SDDC infrastructure so that can then enable vSphere w/K8s.

Here is a screenshot of my vSphere w/K8s environment which was deployed using my Sphere with K8s Automation Lab Deployment script and using the evaluation keys which I had just signed up!

Option 3: Infinite Day Eval

VMware Hands-on-Lab is another great option which is completely free and you only need a web browser! You can check out HOL-2113-01-SDC for more details.

Configuring dnsmasq as PXE Server for ESXi 

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One really cool thing that I came to learn while setting up the infrastructure to network boot the latest Raspberry Pi 4 was the use of dnsmasq, which I have used in the past but I did not realize it could do so much more. In addition to providing DNS services, it can also be configured to run TFTP and provide DHCP capabilities which can then be used to support PXE installations.

Another neat feature of dnsmasq is ability to proxy to an existing DHCP server which is extremely useful for anyone with an existing DHCP infrastructure. Given the simplicity of dnsmasq and having already set this up for the rPI, I figure it would also be useful to take folks through in setting up dnsmasq to also support ESXi installations over PXE, since this still comes up from new folks just getting started with ESXi kickstart automation.

For more details about PXE installation of ESXi, I highly recommend this whitepaper and although it states 6.0, the concepts and configurations are still applicable to the latest ESXi 7.0 release.

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Five of my favorite enhancements in vSphere 7

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It is very easy to focus on the speeds and feeds of a new major vSphere release such as vSphere 7 which also includes a TON of new and exciting capabilities. However, often times it is the tiny improvements that has the most significant impact to our end users, especially when it comes to usability and operations. In fact, this was further reinforced by Frank Denneman's post on the Reddit with similiar observations.

I have been using vSphere 7 since it was released back in April and I have been discovering a number of new vSphere UI enhancements that has really delighted my overall user experience. I had been sharing these enhancements on Twitter, but figured it was worth a blog post given most of these features were not well known.

Do you have a favorite new feature in vSphere 7 that might not be well known? If so, share by leaving a comment below.

1. Enhanced VM Summary

2. Update and Patch Notifications

3. ESXi Firmware and Driver View

4. ESXi Installation Date + Software Package Details

5. Terminate "stuck" VM

Here are two additional non-UI features that I came to learn about in vSphere 7 that you might also be interested in: Support for HTTPS using wget on ESXi and Guest Customization support for Instant Clones.

How to patch Intel NUC 10 with latest ESXi 7.0 update?

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vSphere 7.0b was just released last week and one of the important fixes was to resolve an issue where Nested ESXi VMs were crashing upon powering on an inner-guest VM. This looks to have also affect newer generations of CPUs including Intel's 10th Gen Comet Lake which is also found in the latest 10th Gen Intel NUCs (Frost Canyon).

A number of folks quickly found that if you simply applied the ESXi 7.0b patch, an unexpected behavior occurred on the 10th Gen Intel NUCs and the onboard networking was lost upon a reboot. This occurs as the original ne1000 driver which had been replaced with a newer version found within ESXi 7.0b no longer recognizes the onboard Intel NIC. The solution is quite simple, create a new Image Profile that contains the Intel NUC NIC Driver.

Several of you have asked for instructions and although this is a pretty common vSphere workflow, I have documented the two supported options using the vSphere Image Builder utility but there are definitely other methods which will have the same results. If you have access to a vCenter Server 6.7 or newer, I recommend using the Image Builder UI. If vCenter Server access is not available, then you can use Image Builder with PowerCLI, however you will need to have access to a Windows machine as the Image Builder cmdlet is not supported with PowerCLI Core.

Note: There is currently a known bug with the Image Builder UI when using vSphere 7 which will prevent you from authoring a new Image Profile. A workaround would be to deploy a VCSA 6.7 which does not have this issue when looking to use the Image Builder UI.

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Passthrough of Integrated GPU (iGPU) for Apple Mac Mini 2018

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After successfully enabling and persisting the passthrough of the iGPU for the latest Intel NUC 10 (Frost Canyon), I thought it was worth experimenting with the Apple Mac Mini 2018 to see if the same could be accomplished with its iGPU, which is an Intel UHD 630. The biggest benefit in addition to unlocking the iGPU for general use is support for Apple's Metal API which gives developers access to the underlying GPU when building and testing MacOS and iOS applications. This is also quite timely as the Apple Mac Mini 2018 was just added to the VMware HCL!

My initial attempt failed when using the latest ESXi 6.7 Update 3 release. After enabling passthrough of the iGPU and rebooting the ESXi host for the change to take affect, the system would get stuck during boot up when loading the dma_iommu_mapper module. After speaking with Engineering, the issue is probably not related to dma_iommu_mapper module but some other module shortly after but without serial console output or ability to see terminal screen, it would be very difficult to debug the issue.

About to give up, my last attempt was try ESXi 7.0 and to my surprise the ESXi host fully booted up after enabling passthrough of the iGPU. It is still not clear on what might be causing the problem for 6.7 but at least 7.0 works!

Note: To be able to successfully power on a MacOS VM running on ESXi 7.0, ensure you have applied the recent ESXi 7.0b patch. You will need to go to the VMware Patch Portal siteto download and apply the update.

Step 1- Enable passthrough of the iGPU using the vSphere UI and then reboot for changes to take affect.

Step 2 - Navigate to Configure->Hardware->Graphics->Host Graphics and change the default graphics type to "Shared Direct"

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MacOS 11 (Big Sur) Beta 1 on ESXi

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The first Beta of Apple MacOS 11 (Big Sur) was just released a couple of days ago and I know folks are excited to start kicking the tires. Some folks have noticed when to installing Big Sur running on VMware Fusion, the following error is observed:

BIErrorDomain error 3


From the suggested workarounds, it looks like the MacOS installer was somehow unable to detect that the underlying hardware was Apple which causes this generic error to be thrown. Interestingly, this was the same error I came across when attempting to install Big Sur on ESXi 7.0. Instead of having to lookup your physical Apple hardware IDs and specify several VM Advanced Settings, you can simply add the following setting which will accomplish the same behavior:

smbios.reflectHost = "TRUE"

After the setting has been applied, the error should go away and you should be able to upgrade from an existing MacOS deployment to Big Sur. This issue has already been reported internally at VMware and I have also shared with the teams the quick workaround.

Here is Big Sur on ESXi 7.0 running on an Apple Mac Mini 2018 (requires ESXi 7.0b patch VMware-ESXi-7.0b-16324942)


Here is Big Sur on ESXi 6.7 Update 3 running on an Apple Mac Mini 2018 (requires ESXi 6.7 Patch 02 ESXi670-202004002)