Blog

Create a dual-stack DMZ with Ubiquity EdgeRouter

Due to planned maintenance, I needed to temporary move the blog to my home network to prevent downtime. Hosting a public facing website without precautions, can cause threat actors to laterally move through the network. To lower the risk, the web server running the blog needed to run in a DMZ, separated from the rest of my equipment. At home I use an Ubiquity EdgeRouter 6P for routing, VPN, NAT and firewalling. On an EdgeRouter, Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago

What makes Intel Optane stand out

Once in a while new hardware is released that makes a difference. Such a device is the Intel Optane series of high-performance SSD’s for professional use, which was released in late 2017. In this case I’m talking about the Intel Optane P4800X and P5800X and their consumer counterparts (900P and 905P). All drives are based on the 3D XPoint Technology that Intel co-developed with Micron. In contrary to regular SSD’s, Optane drives like the P5800X Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago

Fixing missing NIC drivers for ESXi hosts

You may recognize this. You’ve updated your ESXi hosts via vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) or similar method, the host rebooted during remediation and… that’s it. Your host is not reachable anymore. That happened to my lab server last week, while updating it to the latest ESXi 8.0 patch release. So what went wrong? In short, this happens when ESXi does not have inbox drivers for your NIC and the vLCM Image configuration does not has Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago
VMware NSX

Deploy NSX 4.x Edge nodes on unsupported vSphere

NSX 4.0 onwards only supports vSphere 7 and later. In my homelab I’m still running ESXi 6.7 which is joined to a vCenter 8 instance. It’s because the RAID controller in my host is unsupported in ESXi 7+ and no native drivers are available. Running an older ESXi version is fine for me since I do most testing on an nested vSphere 8 lab. The issue During the rebuild of my homelab I want to Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago

Update VMware Tools package on ESXi

In most cases VMware Tools are available as part of the ESXi installation. When updating or upgrading vSphere on an ESXi host, the VMware Tools could be updated, but most of the time not to the latest version. In this post I’ll show you how ESXi hosts can updated to the latest available version, when they contain critical bug or security fixes. This post is not about getting VMware Tools up-to-date within your VM’s . Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago

ESXi 8 on the Maxtang NUC

My latest homelab addition is the Maxtang NX6412 NUC which was given by VMware, together with Cohesity (many thanks!) at VMware Explore EU (in the US co-sponsored by NetApp) to all vExperts who registered for the gift. After adding RAM and a SATA SSD, it was time it ran vSphere 8. The specs of this neat, passive cooled box are: The issue with the Maxtang NUC is that both PCIe based Realtek NIC’s and the Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago

Create ESXi 8 Customized ISO Installer

Once and a while ESXi needs to be installed on a device of which the drivers (NIC / Storage) are not built into the ISO installer (yet). In my case it’s needed for the vExpert homelab Maxtang NUC device. This device has a Realtek PCIe NIC’s not supported by ESXi 8. Because of that limitation, I used a Realtek USB based NIC, supported by the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi fling. When a network Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago

VMware Advanced Design vSphere 7.x study links

Although vSphere 8 is released (GA) at VMware Explore Europe 2022 and modified exams can be expected, the vSphere 7 ones are still current. Also at Explore I took the Advanced Design VMware vSphere 7.x exam and passed it to update my VCDX-DCV certification based on vSphere 6.5 to the latest one based on vSphere 7. The exam I took was the Advanced Design VMware vSphere 7.x (3V0-21.21). Also this exam is a requirement for Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago

PowerCLI 13 update and installation hurdles on Windows

Since PowerCLI 13 is released last week (November the 22nd, 2022), I started the update process on my Windows and MacOS device. I needed the latest version to be able to create a customized ESXi 8 ISO installer for the vExpert Maxtang NUC that has the Realtek USB NIC drivers in it. I found out it isn’t as straightforward as the PowerCLI documentation would suggest, which I want to share with you. Update 9-5-2023 PowerCLI Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago