VMware Appliance for Folding@home - help researchers unfold the mystery of diseases like COVID-19 virtually

Tips added since initial publication: There are server-side issues that result in failing to get work assigned to your VM, see ongoing discussions here, new automatic bigadv on 16 CPU or larger VMs seems to have helped. I have now published a short video of downloading/deploying/configuring 1.0.1…

Mar 21 2020

VMware vSphere 7 Announced

Check out the many related articles on the web in my See Also section below. If you're feeling kinda TLDR, try the video gallery below, with General Availability expected by May 1 2020. This long awaited major vSphere release was officially announced earlier today, and I've included 3 key excerpts…

Mar 10 2020

Hear about the amazing Veeam Vanguard program. Maybe my dozen years of Veeam stories will inspire you to apply by Jan 21 2020!

Put your nomination(s) in by January 21 2020, all the instructions are in Nikola Pejková's post here. You can nominate yourself (or be nominated by another person), so don’t be shy and apply by sending your profile summary or CV to As of Jan 21 2020, nominations are now closed. Existing Vanguards re…

Jan 15 2020

My VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 3 Upgrade Experience

This vSphere update was officially announced 6.7 Update 3 last week, and yesterday, it became available to download. For folks with only VMUG Advantage EVALExperience with its (currently) older 6.7 Update 2 VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.7.0.update02-13006603.x86_64.iso they can instead use ESXCLI to…

Aug 21 2019

VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 3 Download

This vSphere update was officially announced last week: VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 3 Announced Today, vSphere 6.7 Update 3 became generally available, and anybody can download and install or upgrade, or just use VUM to upgrade. If you only have VMUG Advantage EVALExperience with its (currently)…

Aug 20 2019

VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 3 Announced

This vSphere update was officially announced one week ago: Announcing vSphere 6.7 Update 3 Aug 13 2019 by Niels Hagoort at VMware vSphere Blog We are excited to announce the future release of VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 3. This new vSphere release comes with enhancements that will continue to…

Aug 20 2019

VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 2 is now generally available for download

This vSphere update was officially announced last week, see: Announcing vSphere 6.7 Update 2, vSphere Platinum updates, and vSphere ROBO Enterprise Apr 02 2019 by Himanshu Singh at VMware vSphere Blog I am excited to share that today we are announcing the VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 2 release,…

Apr 12 2019

VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 2 Announced

This vSphere update was officially announced earlier today: Announcing vSphere 6.7 Update 2, vSphere Platinum updates, and vSphere ROBO Enterprise Apr 02 2019 by Himanshu Singh at VMware vSphere Blog I am excited to share that today we are announcing the VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 2 release, with…

Apr 2 2019

How to configure VMware ESXi 6.7 or later for VMDirectPath I/O pass-through of any NVMe SSD, such as Windows 10 1809 installed directly on an Intel 900P booted in an EFI VM

Notice the 900P U.2 NVMe SSD above the motherboard There was a little-discussed and finally mature capability that arrived with VMware ESXi 6.5, back in November of 2016. See Amazon for the Intel Optane SSD 900P Series, but this consumer drive might not be ideal for most home virtualization lab…

Nov 28 2018

vSphere 6.7 Update 1 Released

On Aug 27 2018, VMware announced many improvements coming in vSphere 6.7 Update 1 / vSAN 6.7 Update 1, which I wrote about here. On Oct 16 2018, the VCSA and ESXi ISO bits became available for download, seen on Virtually Ghetto here including release notes and download links. As usual, you'll want…

Oct 18 2018

How to update any VMware ESXi Hypervisor to the latest using ESXCLI for easy download and install

Mar 4 2024 - My ESXi 8.0U2b testing is now underway on my Xeon D-1541 system, with the release finally indicated officially at VMware by Broadcom here. Ad Advertising Disclosure - This VMware ad earns the vExpert author a commission when used for purchases at vmware.com, a free way to demonstrate…

Sep 14 2018

How to download your VMUG Advantage EVALExperience VMware vSphere 6.7 VCSA and ESXi ISOs and 365 day license keys

If you are wondering exactly where to find your coveted, legitimate VCSA 6.7 and ESXi 6.7 ISOs VMware-VCSA-all-6.7.0-8217866.iso VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.7.0-8169922.x86_64.iso and license keys for your non-production home lab, then you've come to the right place! I've done the hardest part for…

May 4 2018

VMware Product Interoperability Matrices for VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi)

I haven't spotted this table out there recently, with all the vSphere 6.7 discussion these past few days since launch on Tue Apr 17 2018. So I figured I'd give it some visibility, since you may not have read these three documents carefully enough: Important information before upgrading to vSphere…

Apr 22 2018

How to easily update your VMware Hypervisor from 6.x to 6.7 (ESXi 6.7 Build 8169922) using ESXCLI or VUM

This article has largely been superceded/replaced by the newer version, see: How to easily update your VMware ESXi Hypervisor to the latest version with one ESXCLI command Aug 14 2018 See also Eric Siebert's Important information to know before upgrading to vSphere 6.7 and Brandon Lee's VMware…

Apr 18 2018

How to easily update your VMware vCenter Server Appliance from 6.x to 6.7 (VCSA 6.7 Build 8217866)

This article is a work-in-progress DRAFT, meanwhile, you can see how easy an upgrade is from 6.5 to 6.7 in this step-by-step article (spoiler, it's not VAMI, it's using a GUI wizard): How To Upgrade VCSA 6.5 to VCSA 6.7 Jul 12 2018 by Mayur Parmar at Mastering VMware As always, you need to…

Apr 18 2018

How to easily install VMware ESXi 6.7 on an Intel Xeon D Supermicro SuperServer

This is a basic overview document, highlighting the steps that I walk you right through in the accompanying video below. The video features my live recording done on the very day vSphere 6.7 was announced and released, so it's a bit rough around the edges and completely unrehearsed. All that aside,…

Apr 17 2018

How to use GRC's new DNS Benchmark, noting that malware protection is likely the primary benefit of avoiding your ISP's default DNS

What is DNS? THE GLUE THAT HOLDS THE INTERNET TOGETHER The Domain Name System (or DNS) converts human readable domain names (like: www.google.com) into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses (like: 173.194.39.78). Computers can only communicate using series of numbers, so DNS was developed as a sort of…

Apr 4 2018

Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 is another Google Public DNS alternative promising better privacy, with tested faster DNS Benchmark speeds

Cloudflare's announcement: Announcing 1.1.1.1: the fastest, privacy-first consumer DNS service ... Seriously, April 1? The only question that remained was when to launch the new service? This is the first consumer product Cloudflare has ever launched, so we wanted to reach a wider audience. At…

Apr 1 2018

How to easily update your VMware Hypervisor from 6.x to 6.5 Update 1 Patch Release ESXi-6.5.0-20180304001-standard (ESXi Build 7967591) with Spectre mitigation

As covered earlier at TinkerTry, patching for the branch target injection vulnerability known as Spectre-2 requires you to patch your: My own home lab tests of these patches are going well so far. VCSA/vCenter ESXi server(s) (this article) Each VM operating system Each server('s) BIOS/firmware …

Mar 20 2018

How to easily update your VMware vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5.x to 6.5 Update 1g (VCSA 6.5 U1g) with Spectre mitigation

As covered earlier at TinkerTry, patching for the branch target injection vulnerability known as Spectre-2 requires you to patch your: VCSA/vCenter (this article) ESXi server(s) Each VM operating system Each server(s) BIOS/firmware This article is an update to my recent article that has the full…

Mar 20 2018

How to replace your Windows 10 certificate so browser security warnings go away after replacing your VMware VCSA

I recently bumped into an issue after a public demonstration of my home lab. After the successful day, I routinely replaced the VCSA appliance I had been messing around with by deleting the old one and installing a new one. I re-used the same DNS name, which for my home lab is vcsa.lab.local,…

Mar 4 2018

How to easily update your VMware vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5.x to 6.5 Update 1f (VCSA 6.5 U1f) for Meltdown/Spectre-1 mitigation

Important Update - On Mar 20 2018, VMware VMSA-2018-0004.3 announced that CVE-2017-5715 (Spectre-2) mitigation is now included in the latest patch that you should be using instead of the older patch featured in the original article below. You'll find the newer article here: How to easily update…

Feb 20 2018

How to easily update your VMware Hypervisor from 6.x to 6.5 Update 1 Patch Release ESXi650-201801001 (ESXi Build 7388607) for Meltdown/Spectre remediation (patch has been pulled)

*Jan 14 2018 Update - This patch has been pulled, details here. Important Update - On Mar 20 2018, VMware VMSA-2018-0004.3 announced that CVE-2017-5715 (Spectre-2) mitigation is now included in the latest patch that you should be using instead of the older patch featured in the original article…

Jan 13 2018

How to easily update your VMware vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5.x to 6.5 Update 1e (VCSA 6.5 U1e)

Important Update - On Mar 20 2018, VMware VMSA-2018-0004.3 announced that CVE-2017-5715 (Spectre-2) mitigation is now included in the latest patch that you should be using instead of the older patch featured in the original article below. You'll find the newer article here: How to easily update…

Jan 13 2018