MichelleWayZ | Michelle Goossens | Blog

A New Start - With an update

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:45:00 +0000

Hi,

As part of my rebrand from an old domain I've had for many years to a new one that fits my identity better, I've succesfully migrated the blog to a new domain and new backend (it runs on a self-hosted Kubernetes cluster now). I've left a redirect in place, however please do try to update any URLs you might have from blog.masterwayz.nl to https://blog.michellewayz.com, as this will be the new URL going forward.

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.

Quick Lab Tip: Deploy VCF workload domain with single NSX Manager

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 14:00:00 +0000

In this post I will share a quick tip on how I've managed to deploy a VCF Workload Domain with a single NSX Manager, instead of the standard three.

Warning

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.

Fixing slow vService Manager

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 20:03:00 +0000

This is about an issue I encountered in my lab recently. This issue affects vCenter version 8 U2 build 22617221

If you see that cloning VMs and powering on VMs takes forever and they get stuck at 95% and 66% respectively, but eventually finishes after an hour, you can check if you are affected by this issue. Go to the task once it's finished, and check if this is shown in the task log: Failed to retrieve OVF environment sections for VM <VM name> from extension vService Manager. If you see that, you are affected by this issue.

Cost savings in the Lab

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 13:20:52 +0000

With power pricing getting severely out of hand (well, it has been for months now), I figured I should do my part.

Currently, my lab consists of four ESXi servers, two storage servers, one backup server and one personal tinkering server.

My ESXi cluster has always ran on about 1.5 hosts worth of redundancy. In order to save some power, what I did:

Leveraged VMware vRealize Operations Manager (or.. VMware Aria) to appropriately downsize virtual machines to the resources they actually need,
Looked at all the virtual machines again and powered off all VMs that I wasn’t using anymore, or will not use for the foreseeable future,
Decided that for the lab, I will be okay with having no host redundancy at the moment as I do not touch my lab nearly as often anymore as I used to.

For vRealize Operations Manager, part of what the product allows you to do is look whether virtual machines can be upscaled or downscaled. If a VM is short on resources, it will give a recommendation as to what it thinks it would need. The same if it has too many resources, it will tell you whereabouts you can downsize the VM to. In my case, I was able to de-allocate 24 vCPUs and 56GB of memory worth of compute

My Professional Certification/Training Goals for 202X

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 01:07:26 +0000

While everyone is going to make their “new year’s resolutions” I had been thinking of.. What would I like to do in 2023, in an ideal world? (where money isn’t an issue, that is).

In terms of professional development there are a couple of trainings and certifications I would like to go for. Not only to brush up on some of my knowledge and to learn more, but also because, well, certs. (I hope some of you may get that joke.)

[Quick script] – Automatically scan for unmounted VMFS datastores and mount them

Sat, 24 Dec 2022 00:47:48 +0000

Today while I installed two new servers in the rack, I had to mount some iSCSI datastores to these servers as I also have them mounted on other servers.

I wrote a quick script to do this because I am lazy, and decided to share it here in case it may be useful:

1#!/bin/bash
2
3esxcfg-volume -l > /tmp/dump.log
4cat /tmp/dump.log | grep UUID | awk -F ':' '{print $2}' | awk -F '/' '{print $1}' > /tmp/dump2.log
5
6while read line; do esxcfg-volume -M $line; done&lt;/tmp/dump2.log
7
8rm /tmp/dump.log
9rm /tmp/dump2.log</code></pre>

Pretty much what it does is it scans for unmounted VMFS datastores and puts that into a file (line 3). Then on line 4 I have a filter to just take the UUID and put that into another file. On line 6 we take those UUIDs and mount them persistently. Line 8 and 9 are cleaning up.

Thoughts on the new VCP-VMC 2022 exam (and I passed!)

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:45:36 +0000

VMware has launched a new certification. The VMware Cloud Professional – VMware Cloud 2022 certification (yes, that is a mouthful to say over Zoom). In short, let’s call it VCP-VMC 2022 for now.

It was first introduced in this post from VMware. This certificate aims to prove that the holder has sufficient knowledge of the different VMware Cloud offerings. Such as VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, Google Cloud VMware Engine, Azure VMware Solution.. you get it.

New VMware Cloud on AWS host size: i4i.metal

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 13:25:38 +0000

There’s a new host in town! Called i4i.metal.. What can it be used for? What does it cost? Here’s all the answers.

The shiny new i4i.metal host features 64 cores, 1TB of memory (1024 GiB) and ~20.46 TiB of usable blazing fast NVMe storage capacity. That’s a lot of power in a single host.

It’s kind of double what the good old i3.metal host has. It “only” has 36 cores, 512GiB of memory and ~10.37TiB of usable NVMe storage capacity. Thank you VMware’s page.

Improving vSphere Confidence: vSphere 8’s new Release Model

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 18:48:26 +0000

It seems like VMware has listened to the overall feedback that they have received. Usually sysadmins do not agree with each other on a large scale. But one opinion was broadly agreed on; vSphere’s QA was horrible (*insert production is QA meme here*).

Thankfully, VMware has listened to us. On October 5th, they published this blog post.

Starting vSphere 8, there will be a new release model. There will be two phases, IA and GA.

How it feels to become a VMware Partner as a Startup

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 21:35:21 +0000

Hi readers,

Today’s post will be about my experience with having a startup becoming a VMware Partner, where I will explain all the things that I encountered. Both good and bad, so here we go.

First of all during the sign-up process you pay a fee, this was $895 at the time of registering. Will I renew it? No. I will explain why.

To be able to do most managed service things, especially for things like VMware Cloud on AWS, you need to have multiple people get certificates. That is cost on top of the $895 already spent. If you were to need two people have the VCP-DCV cert, you’d already be looking at thousands of dollars and you’re not even there yet, you’re just eligible.

Azure Terraform error: Service returned an error. Status= when creating an Azure Web App

Tue, 10 May 2022 20:24:29 +0000

Hi,

Today I was tinkering around with Azure and Terraform. I’ve been working on creating a Azure Web App based off of Linux. However I ran into the following error:

Failure sending request: StatusCode=0 — Original Error: autorest/azure: Service returned an error. Status=

This was caused by two things. Per the docs, the always_on option should be false by default, but it actually defaults to true. Because I was using the F1 SKU, which is free, this failed as it does not support always_on and it must be a 32 bit worker as well so I also set user_32_bit_worker to true just to be sure.

Homelab Update 24/02/2022

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 20:02:11 +0000

It’s that time of the year again, time to update my blog post about my current homelab!

Here’s a picture of the front, from top to bottom;

ESXi1
ESXi2
ESXi3

From the rear;

ESXi1
ESXi2
ESXi3
EdgeSwitch 24 Lite
EdgeRouter 10X

You’ll notice that the iLO port is ESXi1 isn’t plugged in on the picture, I plugged it in afterwards (forgot to do that before making the picture).

My big mistake with Tanzu Community Edition

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 22:00:14 +0000

Hi,

In this post I want to point out the mistakes I have made when deploying Tanzu Community Edition, what I learned from it, how not to make those mistakes and what ended up happening with how I fixed it.

So for those who don’t know Tanzu Community Edition is kind of a bit like Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, vSphere with Tanzu… you get it, it has to do with Kubernetes and they all have Tanzu in them 😉

Self Service AWS VMC sign up is available – we did it!

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 18:32:29 +0000

This post you are reading is a follow-up to the older post I made here: Ordering VMware Cloud on AWS through AWS as a private individual.

In that post, I talked about how you can consume the VMware Cloud on AWS service while getting billed to your AWS Billing account, meaning no $1000 credit card fee*, and you can use eligible credit for the service (note to specifically check for this as it is not default!)

New HOL: CloudHealth by VMware

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:50:22 +0000

In this post I’d like to shed some light onto a new HOL, which is all about CloudHealth.

For those who don’t know CloudHealth is used for, it’s used for cost management, automation, security among other uses for the Cloud. This not just the usual SDDC, but also Public Clouds, like Oracle, Azure, AWS, IBM Cloud, etc.

The HOL lab is a full ISM (Interactive Simulation?) lab, meaning it has no actual working VMs, but it does have an interactive page that you go through with explanations.

Deploying a VCF lab using VLC

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:50:09 +0000

This post I’ll be taking another look at VLC again, a powershell script that can be used to deploy a nested VMware Cloud Foundation lab.

VLC, which can be downloaded here, is a powershell script that makes it easy to deploy a nested VCF lab. It’ll take care of creating the nested ESXi hosts, all the way to doing the bring-up process if you want to. It can even create and expand workload domains.

My VMworld 2021 Top 10 sessions

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 19:56:37 +0000

This post will list the top 10 sessions over at VMworld 2021 that personally interest me.

VMworld 2021 will be online again this year, which for me personally is great!

So let’s not waste any time and get right into it. Note that these are not in order of my favorites.

Build and Publish a PowerShell Module to the PowerShell Gallery [CODE2756]

Speaker: David Stamen

“Have you ever created a PowerShell module and needed to share it and didn’t know how? The PowerShell gallery is a great place to do this! Join this session and learn how to build and publish a PowerShell module to the PowerShell gallery and allow your contribution to be shared with the VMware Community!”

VMware Cloud on AWS 102: Creating your SDDC

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 00:24:58 +0000

In this post, we will be deploying a single node VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC.

An SDDC is a software-defined data center. VMware Cloud on AWS combines the power and services of AWS and their infrastructure, with the well-known VMware SDDC stack. (vSphere (ESXi), vCenter, vSAN and NSX Data Center).

To get started, we head over to the VMC console and click the create SDDC button to start the process.

Ordering VMware Cloud on AWS through AWS as a private individual

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 23:39:13 +0000

This post will be all about how I went through the unknown road of ordering VMware Cloud on AWS as a private individual through AWS.

First I want to give a huge thanks to Troy Lindsay for helping me massively with all the issues that we came across.

Before I get into it, what exactly is this path? Well, simply put, instead of ordering VMware Cloud on AWS through VMware, I ordered it through AWS. This means that my AWS billing account gets billed (first eligible credit and then my credit card) instead of through VMware, for which using a credit card for VMC on AWS the first time has a $2000 fee (that you will get as credit). For me this is crucial, as a self-learning student I don’t have high budgets, nor a educational facility to ask for help, so I have to pay it out of my own pocket. With no job, it is impossible for me to get $2000 together in any reasonable length of time.

Question to the Community: what would you like to see here?

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 14:27:40 +0000

Good day readers,

This post is all about ideas from the community and readers of my blogs.

What would you like to see here? What kind of content? About what products? More homelab and/or IRL related things? More tutorials? And if yes, about what? Anything you’d like to see is welcome.

Please let me know your feedback! Tweet me here or email me at michelle at masterwayz dot nl

vExpert Pro and vExpert 2021 applications – What is a vExpert Pro? What do we do?

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 17:27:05 +0000

Hi,

As the vExpert 2021 Second Half applications open on June 7th and close on July 9th (click here for the latest schedule), I’d like to talk about what a vExpert Pro is and how they can help new applicants with their vExpert application.

Members of the vExpert Pro program are there to support new applicants with their application, give them advise on anything they can do to improve, and mentor new vExperts in their local communities.

VMware Security Announcement VMSA-2021-0010 CVSSv3 score range 6.5 to 9.8

Tue, 25 May 2021 20:53:11 +0000

Hi everyone,

An urgent post for anyone on vCenter 6.5, 6.7 or 7.0!

NOTE: The information below is a snapshot of the VMSA-2021-0010 page, and this page may not be updated anymore after the post. For the latest information, I redirect you to the VMSA-2021-0010 link.

UPDATE: VMware just made a blog post with advise, questions, workarounds and more. You can find it here.

VMSA-2021-0010 has just been released, addressing:

My experience with the VMC on AWS Guided Hands-On Workshop

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 20:55:03 +0000

Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since I have posted here. An update on what has been going on will follow soon, however, this post will be about my experience with the VMC on AWS Guided Hands-On Workshop I took as part of a VMUG.

I have to say, overall it went pretty good. This was the first time that they were doing this for a VMUG I believed they said, so keep this in mind.

VMC on AWS interest sheet

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 21:46:32 +0000

Hello reader,

For a while I’ve been having an idea for an offering I have not been able to find anywhere. Currently, if you want to pay for VMware Cloud on AWS through a credit card, you have to pay $2000 up-front which expires after 60 days. Not everyone can do this, so this is where this comes in.

The idea is that you will be able to rent your own single node SDDC in a region of your choice, with a lower up-front fee. Right now the idea is that you will be given access to a dummy org, that an SDDC can be provisioned in just for you. Yours and yours only, and you will nearly have the same access, except you won’t be able to deploy or delete SDDCs, at least for the start. There may be an automated system coming where this will be possible, however first before I start to ask around further and work on things, I want to see how much interest there is.

NSX-T Data Center: Tier 0 Router not showing up in VPN Service dropdown

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 23:46:37 +0000

Hi everyone,

In this post, I want to highlight an issue I had.

I wanted to create a VPN Service, connected to a Tier 0 gateway. But none of my tier 0 gateways would show up. I couldn’t find any information on this, not even in the documentation (it’s well hidden and unless you know what to look for, it’s not easily found).

I attempted to make an API call, and this is when I found the solution to my issue. I made a PUT request to:

My lab Bill of Materials

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 16:52:47 +0000

Hi everyone,

For this post, we’re going to look into all the gear I have in my lab. Note that these are all links and prices that I paid for at the time.

Let’s start with compute. I will list a table here of the servers.

NOTE: This BoM is outdated and is yet to be updated pending upgrades that I'm saving up for. However since the cost is about 1800 euros this will take a while and I may have to decommission my current lab as you see below to be able to save that together within any reasonable timeframe

ESXi1:

Why I like VMware TestDrive so much (comes with VMUG Advantage)

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 15:24:35 +0000

Hi everyone,

For those who follow me and sometimes chat with me, you probably know that I am a big fan of VMware TestDrive. I don’t hear a lot about it, but I think it’s something great and very useful.

What is VMware TestDrive exactly? To quote them: “With ready-made integrations with some of our most popular ecosystem partners, TestDrive allows you to explore VMware solutions alongside applications and services modeled on typical customers use cases, in a real-world environment.”

VMC on AWS – HCX – Site Pairing and interconnect

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 16:09:36 +0000

Hi,

In this post, we’ll be talking about setting up a Site Pair and interconnect with HCX, between your on-prem datacenter and your VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC.

Video version here.

Written version:

In this post, we are going to create a Site Pair in HCX and an interconnect. Like the name suggests, a site pair pairs two HCX sites together, so you can create an interconnect between them. Interconnects are used for network stretching among other things.

Collection of VMworld vRealize announcement posts

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 14:59:05 +0000

Hi,

This blog post serves more as a collection of links to other blogs about new announcements that VMware has made during VMworld.

1. The new vRealize Cloud Universal offering.

With this new hybrid subscription offering, VMware is providing customers the flexibility to consume both on-premise and SaaS vRealize Suite products and services using a single subscription license. This offering allows customers the freedom to move workloads between on-premise and SaaS offerings interchangeably without the requirement to purchase new licenses. Additionally, this new offering provides access to Cloud Federated Analytics and Cloud Federated Catalog capabilities.

VMC on AWS – HCX – Deployment

Sun, 23 Aug 2020 14:21:54 +0000

Hi everyone,

In this blog post, we will be going over how to deploy HCX on both your VMware on AWS SDDC and also on-prem.

So what exactly is HCX? One of the main features of HCX is stretching networks between on-prem and your VMC on AWS SDDC. (It does not have to specifically be to/from a VMC SDDC). Also you can migrate VMs, as a vMotion (live) migration, or as a bulk migration.

VMware Cloud on AWS with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid – Public IP on kubernetes load balancer.

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:53:25 +0000

Hi readers,

In this post, we will be taking our previously deployed TKG workload cluster and make it accessible through a public IP using NAT.

First, we deploy an application. I’ll use yelb. See the previous post on how that works.

Here we see that our application is deployed. Let’s look at the load balancer IP.

As we can see, the IP is 10.250.20.61

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on On-Prem or VMC on AWS – Management and workload deployment

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 17:38:53 +0000

Hi everyone,

In this post we will be making our own deployment VM to deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on VMware Cloud on AWS. There is a demo appliance, but I would like to use the latest versions of everything. If you would like to know more about Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, please check out this link. This also works for on-prem, but the UI is different for NSX-T for the on-prem manager.

I’m a vExpert now!

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 20:29:47 +0000

Hi everyone,

I applied for the second-half vExpert applications and I got accepted!

This is the first time and I’m really, really happy! This is my fourth attempt and here is to hopefully more years of vExpert.

Here is my public profile page.

If you don’t know what vExpert is, you are missing out on a lot, quoting from the site:
“The VMware vExpert program is VMware’s global evangelism and advocacy program. The program is designed to put VMware’s marketing resources towards your advocacy efforts. Promotion of your articles, exposure at our global events, co-op advertising, traffic analysis, and early access to beta programs and VMware’s roadmap. The awards are for individuals, not companies, and last for one year. Employees of both customers and partners can receive the awards. In the application, we consider various community activities from the previous year as well as the current year’s (only for 2nd half applications) activities in determining who gets awards. We look to see that not only were you active but are still active in the path you chose to apply for.”

In-place upgrading a NSX-T ESXi Host with multiple host switches.

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 23:53:19 +0000

Hi everyone,

Here is how I upgraded my NSX-T deployment from 3.0.0 to 3.0.1.

If you tried to in-place update a NSX-T Host that has multiple host switches, you will get an error. You can use this trick to get around this limitation.

First, we log into the NSX-T Manager, and go to the Upgrade tab under system. Here, we upload the file and continues with the upgrade.
We upgrade like normal until we get on the hosts tab. We SSH into the host and we first visit this URL: http://:8080/repository/metadata/manifest
This file contains the link to the zip file that we need to wget in /tmp on the ESXi host. Then we run:

Setting up a free KMS server for vCenter with PyKMIP (with database)

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 13:38:28 +0000

Hi everyone,

In this post, we will be deploying a PyKMIP server that stores its keys in a database. Unlike the docker container, the keys will be saved so on a reboot your keys are not lost.

So what exactly is this for? Well, in my use-case, I will be using this server to encrypted virtual machine files and drives.

For this tutorial, we will be using self-signed certs and this keys will be stored in a sqlite database. This is not secure at all! However, it will allow you to evaluate and learn the KMS functions within vCenter.

Hilltop CTF – Writeups

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 21:42:45 +0000

Hi everyone,

A blog post on a different topic this time. I was a Content Engineer for the Hilltop CTF event.

Write-up for the Fuzz challenge.

Challenge name: Fuzz

Creator: MasterWayZ

Category: Analysis/Fuzzing

Summary:

The user is given a URL to look at: http://shellserver1.hilltopctf.masterwayz.nl:5876/

How-To:

Using a program like gobuster, we can try to see what directories exist: gobuster dir -u http://shellserver1.hilltopctf.masterwayz.nl:5876/ -w /usr/share/wordlists/dirbuster/directory-list-2.3-medium.txt.
We get a /301 redirect of /penguins. From here, it’s a matter of running gobuster dir -u http://shellserver1.hilltopctf.masterwayz.nl:5876/penguins/ -w /usr/share/wordlists/dirbuster/directory-list-2.3-medium.txt -x txt. The txt extension comes from the .txt file part in the README.md file.

Explanation:

We use gobuster to try to see what folder it is hidden in. dir specifies directory mode, -u specifies the URL and -w specifies the wordlist.
a 301 redirect of /penguins means that we’ve found something. Now we need to find the file in that directory. The new flag, -x specifies the extension used by gobuster to try to find files.

Write-up for the Fuzzy challenge.

Challenge name: Fuzzy

Creator: MasterWayZ

Category: Analysis/Fuzzing, Attacks/Cracking

Summary:

For this challenge, you need to fuzz a Flask webserver to start with. Followed by brute-forcing a password and then automating or guessing the missing character in the flag.

Horizon 7.11 Deployment – Part 5: Windows 10 Desktop Image (refers to TechZone for now, video coming soon!)

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 21:24:39 +0000

Hi everyone,

Sadly during server maintenance, the contents of this blog posts were corrupted.

For now, I will link you all to a TechZone article that explain you what to do. A video on this will be coming soon once I get to it.

My apologies!

VMware Purple Screen of Death troubleshooting for random crashes with disk errors in the homelab.

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 21:18:52 +0000

Hi everyone,

Time for a new blog post about the adventure I’ve been having for the past two days.

On June 2nd, my server, a DL380G6 started to suddenly take-off. The fans were roaring at 70%, and the temperature sensor near the PCI Riser was showing 110 C. Of course this is not supposed to happen, in this blog post, I will take you through my experience of troubleshooting this and hopefully this can help you.

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.

Software review: 4K Video Downloader

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 15:13:35 +0000

Hi everyone,

In this post I’d like to make a highlight of a piece of software I have been using called 4K Video Downloader.

This program is very useful to download videos from sites such as YouTube and Twitch. However, it can download from many more and even playlists!

You can get started with the program here. ( https://www.4kdownload.com/products/product-videodownloader/?r=free_license )

Pros:
– Can download videos from YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Flickr, Dailymotion, Metacafe and registered Twitch streams. (These are officially supported, sometimes it works on other sites as well. You can always request one to be added here.
– Can extract audio from a video and just save it as an MP3 or similar.
– Can download playlists.

Horizon 7.11 Deployment – Part 4: Deploying & Configuring Unified Access Gateway Appliance

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 19:49:05 +0000

Hi readers,

In this part of the series, we will be deploying the VMware Horizon Unitied Access Gateway Appliance. It’s similar to the old Horizon Security server, and I myself mainly use it so I can connect to my Horizon connection server from a public IP address. (from my /24 block)

First what we do is download and deploy the UAG OVA template. In my set-up, a normal deployment will suffice and two NICs are enough. One is for the internal LAN, and one is for the external network.

Horizon 7.11 Deployment – Part 3: Deploying & Configuring Connection Server

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 01:38:53 +0000

Hi readers,

In this third part of the series, we will be deploying the Connection Server., the base of the Horizon package.

First, we will need a server or virtual machine running Windows Server 2012 or higher. The OS requirement is simple (source):

<th>
Version
</th>
<th>
Edition
</th>

<td>
64-bit
</td>
<td>
Standard Enterprise Datacenter
</td>

<td>
64-bit
</td>
<td>
Standard Datacenter
</td>

<td>
64-bit
</td>
<td>
Standard Datacenter
</td>

<td>
64-bit
</td>
<td>
Standard Datacenter
</td>

Operating System
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2019

The following hardware requirements apply (source):

Horizon 7.11 Deployment – Part 2: Requirements

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 16:27:57 +0000

Hello readers,

Welcome to part two of the Horizon 7.11 deployment series. In this short post, we will go over what we will deploy in this series, what it is and in what part it will be deployed.

We will deploy the following:

Active Directory. (An ADDS server for our domain. This is a requirement that I will not go over. On request I may make a post about this.)
Horizon Connection Server. (This Connection Server will be the brain of our Horizon deployment. It will handle assignments, allocation, and management of desktops and RDSH servers.) – This will be deployed in Part 3.
Optional: Unified Access Gateway. (For my deployment, I want to be able to connect to a public IP from my /24 block, and access the Connection Server this way. Previously the Security Server was used for this.) – This will be deployed in Part 4.
Optional: a Remote Desktop Session Host. With this, one of the use cases is to allow users to connect to applications on the RDSH host. (I will just use this to experiment.) This will be deployed in Part 6.

In part 4, I will be going over a TechZone article and show you how to create a Windows 10 image that can be cloned easily to fit your deployment. For now, I will not go over View Composer. However, later in the series I will, once I’ve deployed a copy of this set-up as a lab. However, due to SSD space issues this may take a while. I may try to balance it in HDDs, but I have to be careful to avoid this insanity.

Horizon 7.11 Deployment – Part 1: Use-case, goal and why Horizon?

Sat, 01 Feb 2020 15:57:00 +0000

Hi readers,

This post is the first part of a VMware Horizon 7.11 Deployment series. In this first part, we will look into what Horizon is, what it is used for and why you should use it.

As VMware puts it out, which is a great explanation of what Horizon 8 is for; VMware Horizon 7: “simplifies the management and delivery of virtual desktops and apps on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid or multi-cloud configuration through a single platform to end-users. By leveraging complete workspace environment management and optimized for the software-defined data center, Horizon 7 helps IT control, manage, and protect all of the Windows resources end users want, at the speed they expect, with the efficiency business demands.“

VMware Cloud Foundation – Part 2: Upgrading

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Hello readers,

This is part two of my VMware Cloud Foundation series. In this part, we will be upgrading all components to the latest version. At the time of writing 3.9 is the latest version and currently I am running 3.8.

In part one, we have done a bring-up on our SDDC, creating and deploying the management Workload Domain (WLD).

First what you need to do, is to connect a My VMware account, so it can download the upgrade bundles.

Highlighting PowerVCF

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 02:00:00 +0000

Hi readers,

This will be a short post. However, I want to take my time now and highlight a new creation from Gary Blake, Giuliano Bertello and Brandon Willmott called PowerVCF.

PowerVCF is, as from their GitHub page: “PowerVCF is a PowerShell Module for interacting with the VMware Cloud Foundation (SDDC Manager) public API.”

It has been tested with PowerShell 5.x and PowerShell Core 6.x
To install the module, open PowerShell as an Administrator and run:
Install-Module -Name PowerVCF
Or, alternatively, you can install the module download from the zip file in th GitHub repo:
Import-Module .\PowerVCF

VMware Hands on Labs: what is it?

Tue, 14 Jan 2020 14:21:19 +0000

Hi everyone,

You may have heard me mention VMware Hands on Labs a few times, but what exactly is it?

VMware Hands on Labs allows you to test drive products within your browser, at no cost. With HOL, you can evaluate the features and functionality of VMware products without the need to have your own physical lab hardware.

If you browse through the catalog you will see that there is plenty of choices. Ranging from Getting Started with vSphere, to VMC on AWS, Cloud Foundation, PKS and even challenge and Odyssey labs. (Odyssey labs deserve their own blog post that will be posted later)

vExpert 2020 Applications

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 00:18:06 +0000

Hi everyone,

EDIT: The vExpert 2020 first half applications are now closed!

~~Don’t forget to apply for vExpert if you haven’t already! According to Twitter, the closing date has moved to 1/13 at 10 AM MT.~~

Apply here with your blog posts, VMUG events, other events, talks, and much more. There are also more paths, like customer path, VCDX path and more!

Be sure to give it a go, I have too! On my Twitter, I replied to VMware’s tweet saying that I applied as well, and that I’ve applied again and that hopefully third time’s a charm. Well, to my surprise, one of the VMware people replied to me:

VMware Cloud Foundation – Part 1: Deploying management domain with VLC

Tue, 07 Jan 2020 07:17:00 +0000

Hello readers,

In this part, we will be deploying VMware Cloud Foundation in a nested environment using vCF Lab Constructor, which you can read more about here. TLDR: it is a PowerShell script designed to automatically deploy vCF along with the management Workload Domain (WLD).

VCF Lab Constructor (aka VLC) is a great PowerShell tool created by Ben Sier and Heath Johnson working at VMware in the Technical Marketing team. A big thank you for them for making this amazing script!
Quoting from a blog post (which is how I learned about it), found here:
“It’s the easiest way to essentially deploy a Cloud Foundation nested environment, without having to manually install ESXi, Cloud Builder as well as doing lots of validation on your own.”

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.

VMware Cloud Foundation – Part 0: Testing

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 22:57:55 +0000

Hi readers,

Currently, I temporarily have access to a server with enough memory to run a Cloud Foundation lab until January 2nd 2020.

This gave me the inspiration to build a Cloud Foundation lab and tinker around with it, along with tinkering with an automatic lab deployment script called VLC (VCF Lab Constructor). This is a Powershell program designed to make it easy to deploy a nested (means: running Virtual Machines within Virtual Machines.) Cloud Foundation lab. This is not supported by anyone other than some communities, but it seems to work great for others so I wanted to give it a try.

More PowerCLI scripts to make life easier!

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 07:25:00 +0000

Hello!

Inspired by my last blog post, here are more PowerCLI scripts to make life easier.

Script one; get VMs on a specific host with a specific Port Group

$viserver = "vCenter IP/FQDN here"
$t_host = "ESXi FQDN/IP here as used in vCenter"
$portgroup = "port group name here"
Connect-VIServer $viserver
Get-Cluster -VMHost $t_host | Get-VMHost | Get-VM | Get-NetworkAdapter | Where-Object{$_.NetworkName -like $portgroup}

Script two; get VMs on a specific host with a specific Port Group and move them over to a new Port Group

Easy PowerCLI script to help migrate VMs from one network to the other.

Sat, 07 Dec 2019 06:00:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

In this post I am sharing a PowerCLI script that I made in order to easily migrate VMs from one network to the other.

There are two versions of this script, one version has a hard-coded ESXi/vCenter instance, and the other one asks for the vCenter on each run.

Version 1 (hard coded ESXi/vCenter):

Do {
$vspherehost = "ADD-ME"
$src = Read-Host -Prompt "Input source network"
$dst = Read-Host -Prompt "Input destination network"
Connect-VIServer $vspherehost
Get-VM | Get-NetworkAdapter | where{$_.NetworkName -like $src} | Set-NetworkAdapter -NetworkName $dst
} while($true)

Version 2 (Asks for ESXi/vCenter on reach run):

Moved from NSX-T back to NSX-V

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 00:27:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

This post will be out about me moving back from NSX-T to NSX-V due to weird deploying issues.

NSX-V is no longer being developed, so this has caused me to try to migrate to the new NSX-T, however I moved back to NSX-V when my NSX-T Edge nodes started to fail. The Geneve tunnels to the ESXi host randomly started to stop working and asking on the VMTN NSX forums did not work either as I got no response after four days and I needed my virtual networking to work again, so I figured that it would be easier to migrate back to NSX-V until I reinstall ESXi on the host.

What it is like to have your own IPv6 and IPv4 space

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 19:00:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

As some of you know, I have my own IPv4 and IPv6 subnet, along with my own Autonomous System Number, in my case AS208751.

I am not a LIR (Local Internet Registry, you can read more about that here.) myself, so I had to get a sponsoring LIR to request my ASN. Once that was taken care off, I got myself a /44 IPv6 subnet, and a /24 IPv4 subnet.

Creating YouTube videos and more lab space

Fri, 11 Oct 2019 16:24:45 +0000

Hello readers,

Welcome to my new blog post, in this post I’ll be sharing some ideas that I had.

For the past few weeks I have been thinking of creating posts about setting up a nested ESXi lab with NSX and vSAN. I thought to myself: “Why not make both a blog post and a YouTube tutorial?”. Which is exactly what I will be doing, once my new microphone arrives, is all set up and when it works.

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.

IPv6 and BGP adventure

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 18:08:07 +0000

Hi readers,

This post will be about my ‘adventure’ of getting my own AS number, IPv6 subnet, and peering with Hurricane Electric to announce my IPv6 subnet over a 6to4 tunnel.

I started to chat with someone on Discord about getting my own IPv6 subnet. They’re not that expensive. I got mine from SnapServ. I purchased a /44 IPv6 subnet and an Autonomous System Number.

After having successfully set-up a 6to4 tunnel with Hurricane Electric before, I decided to sign up for a BGP tunnel, so I can use my own IP address space.

New hard drive tomorrow and testing VMware Horizon (UPDATED 12/7/19)

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 18:07:59 +0000

Hi readers,

Tomorrow I’m getting a 2TB drive that I can put in my server. I plan to use it for an apt mirror, and to run a test environment on it for VMware Horizon.

It has been a while since I have used VMware Horizon, so I hope that my memory won’t let me down. If it does, then there’s always the documentation… (and YouTube).

For a short while it will also be used for my to make screenshots of VMware tutorials that I write for Hetzner’s wiki. I’ve written a vCenter and NSX one, and I’m almost done with the screenshots for the vCenter PR. The NSX tutorial does not have a PR yet.

Server update: it’s all (almost) set-up

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 19:09:30 +0000

Hi readers,

Welcome to this server update post. I’ve made some changes to the system, and it’s almost done! Sadly, right now it’s come of a stop, because of lack of storage space.

It’s not a big update. Hardware-wise, nothing changed. I am planning to go 10 gigabit though, whenever I have more monthly income, because with what I earn right now, it would me impossible.

VM-wise, I added a virtual machine for peering with a Virtual Internet Exchange. Currently I am working on my own Virtual Internet Exchange, which would be for people who want to learn BGP, routing and more.

My server

Sat, 22 Jun 2019 23:07:18 +0000

Hi readers!
Welcome to my first real blog post! In this post, I will be explaining my current server, my trusty HP ProLiant DL380G6.

It’s armed with two Intel Xeon X5650s, which each have 6 core and 12 threads, making it a total of 12 cores and 24 threads. It has 144 GB (18x 8GB) of ECC RAM, and it currently have two 500GB SSDs, along with a single 320GB HDD.
Here is a picture:

MichelleWayZ | Michelle Goossens | Blog

A New Start - With an update

Unable to connect vSphereVM to NSX-T Segment in Terraform

Quick Lab Tip: Deploy VCF workload domain with single NSX Manager

Fixing missing component(s) nmlx5 during vib update

Fixing slow vService Manager

Cost savings in the Lab

My Professional Certification/Training Goals for 202X

[Quick script] – Automatically scan for unmounted VMFS datastores and mount them

Thoughts on the new VCP-VMC 2022 exam (and I passed!)

New VMware Cloud on AWS host size: i4i.metal

Improving vSphere Confidence: vSphere 8’s new Release Model

How it feels to become a VMware Partner as a Startup

Azure Terraform error: Service returned an error. Status= when creating an Azure Web App

Homelab Update 24/02/2022

My big mistake with Tanzu Community Edition

Self Service AWS VMC sign up is available – we did it!

New HOL: CloudHealth by VMware

Deploying a VCF lab using VLC

My VMworld 2021 Top 10 sessions

VMware Cloud on AWS 102: Creating your SDDC

Ordering VMware Cloud on AWS through AWS as a private individual

Question to the Community: what would you like to see here?

vExpert Pro and vExpert 2021 applications – What is a vExpert Pro? What do we do?

VMware Security Announcement VMSA-2021-0010 CVSSv3 score range 6.5 to 9.8

My experience with the VMC on AWS Guided Hands-On Workshop

VMC on AWS interest sheet

NSX-T Data Center: Tier 0 Router not showing up in VPN Service dropdown

My lab Bill of Materials

NOTE: This BoM is outdated and is yet to be updated pending upgrades that I'm saving up for. However since the cost is about 1800 euros this will take a while and I may have to decommission my current lab as you see below to be able to save that together within any reasonable timeframe

Why I like VMware TestDrive so much (comes with VMUG Advantage)

VMC on AWS – HCX – Site Pairing and interconnect

Collection of VMworld vRealize announcement posts

VMC on AWS – HCX – Deployment

VMware Cloud on AWS with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid – Public IP on kubernetes load balancer.

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on On-Prem or VMC on AWS – Management and workload deployment

I’m a vExpert now!

In-place upgrading a NSX-T ESXi Host with multiple host switches.

Setting up a free KMS server for vCenter with PyKMIP (with database)

Hilltop CTF – Writeups

Write-up for the Fuzz challenge.

Challenge name: Fuzz

Creator: MasterWayZ

Category: Analysis/Fuzzing

Summary:

How-To:

Explanation:

Write-up for the Fuzzy challenge.

Challenge name: Fuzzy

Creator: MasterWayZ

Category: Analysis/Fuzzing, Attacks/Cracking

Summary:

Horizon 7.11 Deployment – Part 5: Windows 10 Desktop Image (refers to TechZone for now, video coming soon!)

VMware Purple Screen of Death troubleshooting for random crashes with disk errors in the homelab.

Sponsored VMUG Advantage! & what is it?

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

Software review: 4K Video Downloader

Horizon 7.11 Deployment – Part 4: Deploying & Configuring Unified Access Gateway Appliance

Horizon 7.11 Deployment – Part 3: Deploying & Configuring Connection Server

Horizon 7.11 Deployment – Part 2: Requirements

Horizon 7.11 Deployment – Part 1: Use-case, goal and why Horizon?

VMware Cloud Foundation – Part 2: Upgrading

Highlighting PowerVCF

VMware Hands on Labs: what is it?

vExpert 2020 Applications

VMware Cloud Foundation – Part 1: Deploying management domain with VLC

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

VMware Cloud Foundation – Part 0: Testing

More PowerCLI scripts to make life easier!

Easy PowerCLI script to help migrate VMs from one network to the other.

Moved from NSX-T back to NSX-V

What it is like to have your own IPv6 and IPv4 space

Creating YouTube videos and more lab space

Adding a static route to ESXi

IPv6 and BGP adventure

New hard drive tomorrow and testing VMware Horizon (UPDATED 12/7/19)

Server update: it’s all (almost) set-up

My server