Instant Cloned ESXi for My VMware Homelab

Nested Virtualisation has come a long way over the past 15 years. I remember hacking away at VMware Workstation to run ESX 3.5 and then run a guest VM nested on top of that just because I could. Although VMware does not officially support Nested Virtualisation for production use, the capability is native these days….

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Export Machine SSL Embedded Private Key From vCenter

This quick post demonstrates how to export the Machine SSL embedded Private key from your vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). If you replaced the default Machine SSL certificate on your vCenter where the CSR was generated from the vCenter Server, the private key would be embedded in the vCenter Appliance certificate store. If you need to…

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Remove certificates with weak signature algorithms in vCenter Server

During the vCenter Server 8.0 upgrade, I was faced with the following Pre-upgrade check error and wasn’t able to continue the upgrade. As of vCenter Server 8.0, certificates with SHA-1 signature algorithms are no longer supported and must be removed or replaced with a certificate that uses SHA-2 signature algorithm. In this post, I’ll show…

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Customise ESXi Image Profiles using vCenter Image Builder UI

Customising ESXi image profiles is helpful when you need to add custom drivers to your ESXi installation image. I will demonstrate in this post, how to customise ESXi image profiles using the built-in Image Builder service on vCenter 7. I usually use Powershell to build customised ESXi images; however, non-windows users might find this handy…

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Setup vCenter Alarm Action Script To Send Push Notifications

I recently came across this useful app, Alertzy.app. It’s a service that allows you to send and receive real-time alerts as push notifications on your iOS and Android device. I was impressed with how simple it was to set up and use, and it’s free for up to 100 notifications per day. I figured this could…

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Replace Default vCenter Certificate with a Free Let’s Encrypt SSL

On September 30, 2021, the DST Root CA X3 used to sign Let’s Encrypt’s R3 Intermediate CA Expired; therefore, some of the previous guides I’ve written and many that you will find online are no longer valid. This guide steps you through the process to install a Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate for vCenter that…

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Launch vCenter VCSA UI/CLI Installer on MacOS

MacOS from Catalina onwards, a security change prevents non notarized apps from running. To get around this, you need to exclude the VCSA Installer from the MacOS Security Gatekeeper by removing the metadata quarantine attribute “com.apple.quarantine” for the VCSA ISO. Before mounting the ISO, open Terminal and run the following command Now you may mount…

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Fix Remote Host Identification Has Changed! on macOS

I get this issue quite a bit in my homelab, and it’s expected as I frequently rebuild hosts, replace SSL certificates etc. The reason it happens is that the key to the IP address you’re connecting to is saved in the file, “known_hosts” from a previous session, and is now different to the one you…

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Automate Free SSL Certificate Replacement for vCenter 7

In the past, I’ve posted some guides for replacing the default self-signed vCenter certificate with a free, trusted Let’s Encrypt 90 Day certificate. I recently started to look into generating the free SSL using an ACME client and stumbled across this PowerShell module Posh-ACME (Credit to Ryan Bolger – https://github.com/rmbolger for this module). I decided to…

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Invalid vCenter Cert using macOS Catalina and Chrome

I had redeployed my home lab vCenter appliance, and upon attempting to access the vCenter UI, I was denied access and encountered the following error “NET::ERR_CERT_INVALID“ Details in the Error vc.virtuallywired.io normally uses encryption to protect your information. When Google Chrome tried to connect to vc.virtuallywired.io this time, the website sent back unusual and incorrect…

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