VSphere on MichelleWayZ | Michelle Goossens | Blog

Unable to connect vSphereVM to NSX-T Segment in Terraform

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 08:30:00 +0000

Hi,

Recently while rebuilding the lab, I came across what seems to be a bug between the hashicorp/vsphere and the vmware/nsxt terraform providers.

For example, here's a snippet from code that should work, but doesn't:

 1resource "nsxt_policy_segment" "testinglinuxlab1" {
 2 display_name = "testinglinuxlab1"
 3 transport_zone_path = data.nsxt_policy_transport_zone.overlay_tz.path
 4 connectivity_path = data.nsxt_policy_tier1_gateway.T1Main.path
 5
 6 subnet {
 7 cidr = "10.183.94.1/24"
 8 }
 9}
10
11resource "vsphere_virtual_machine" "testinglinuxlab101" {
12 name = "testing-linuxlab1-01"
13 resource_pool_id = data.vsphere_compute_cluster.AVA.resource_pool_id
14 datastore_id = data.vsphere_datastore.ssd.id
15
16 num_cpus = 2
17 memory = 2048 # in MB
18 guest_id = data.vsphere_virtual_machine.debian12-template.guest_id
19
20 network_interface {
21 network_id = resource.nsxt_policy_segment.testinglinuxlab1.id
22 adapter_type = data.vsphere_virtual_machine.debian12-template.network_interface_types[0]
23 }
24
25 disk {
26 label = "disk0"
27 size = "50" # In GB
28 eagerly_scrub = false
29 thin_provisioned = true
30 }
31
32 clone {
33 template_uuid = data.vsphere_virtual_machine.debian12-template.id
34
35 customize {
36 linux_options {
37 host_name = "testing-test01"
38 domain = "ava.michellegoossens.com"
39 }
40
41 network_interface {
42 ipv4_address = "10.183.94.10"
43 ipv4_netmask = 24
44 dns_server_list = [ "192.168.74.112" ]
45 }
46
47 ipv4_gateway = "10.183.94.1"
48 }
49 }
50 lifecycle {
51 ignore_changes = [
52 clone[0].template_uuid
53 ]
54 }
55}

This is because the vSphere provider wants a dvPortgroup ID, but the NSX-T provider doesn't give that nor has an option (from what I could find) to give this.

Fixing missing component(s) nmlx5 during vib update

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 16:11:00 +0000

Recently while I was trying to update a new homelab server from ESXi 8 to ESXi 8 U3b using the command esxcli software vib update --depot=/vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/depot.zip, I stumbled upon the following error: Profile <> is missing component(s) ESXi,Mellanox-nmlx5.

After trying to remove the installed VIBs (that are for Mellanox cards, I do not have any) using esxcli software vib list | grep nml, and then esxicli software vib remove <vib name>, the issue still occured.

Allow unsupported CPUs when upgrading/installing ESXi 7.0 (updated 10022020)

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 13:13:34 +0000

Hi everyone,

Here’s a quick tip for the home lab people with old servers that can’t afford to get new hardware (like me).

It seems like that you can override the installer terminating when an unsupported CPU is detected.

What you need to do, is when booting from the ESXi ISO, press SHIFT+O, and type in:

allowLegacyCPU=true

This will allow you to install or upgrade an ESXi 6.7 installation.

I’ve tested this from my server with two X5660s and have no issues. The issue listed below has been fixed as of 7.0b (I believe that’s the version number), and you can run nested VMs again on ESXi 7 hosts with X56xx series CPUs.

ESXi with TPS: more (shared) memory for your homelab

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 07:40:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

This post will be about a nice trick I learned to get the maximum out of your VMware Homelab.

TPS, or Transparent Page Sharing, is a function where, in short, multiple identical virtual memory pages are pointing to the same page within the memory of the host. Here is a whitepaper that goes more in-depth.

It used to be on by default, but I believe that it was turned off due to security concerns (KB). However, it’s still easy to turn on.

Adding a static route to ESXi

Mon, 22 Jul 2019 00:31:24 +0000

Hi readers,

This short post will be about how I had to set-up a static route on ESXi to my VPN subnet.

My setup is as follows: I have an ESXi server in DC1, and a ESXi server at home. The Home ESXi server has vCenter and vRealize Operations Manager on it. My goal was to have vRealize Operations Manager give rightsize advise on VMs on both my home server and the server in DC1. For this to work, I need to add my DC1 server to my vCenter server. I created a datacenter for it in vCenter, and I created a vmkernel adapter on the LAN network of the DC1 server. There is an IPSec VPN that links the remote network and my local network.