Virtualisation ⁽¹⁰⁾

According to some industry commentators, Broadcom's changes to VMware licensing may drive adoption of alternative hypervisors such as Proxmox. By extension, Proxmox might also be considered as an alternative to other paid-for hypervisors, like Hyper-V. However, whilst tooling and knowledge exists regarding the migration of…

I'm currently experimenting with a refurbished small form factor Dell OptiPlex 5050 as a Hyper-V server in my Homelab. This model of computer is widely and cheaply available and supports 64GB of RAM, making it a cheap and accessible virtualisation host. However, by default Windows…

I recently purchased an aging Lenovo Thinkstation M92p Tiny from an auction site for a bargain price. It has an i5-3470T processor, 8gb Ram and a 120gb SSD. My intent was to install VMware to host a couple of very lightweight but critical VMs required…

An article called VMware Tools for Debian 10 arm64 on ESXi-Arm on Virten.net explains that a compiled version of Open VM Tools is not available in repositories for ARM builds of many common guest operating systems. Their workaround is to compile a version from the…

Here is a technique to permanently enable SSH access on ESXi hosts. VMWare warns against leaving SSH access enabled on production servers due to security concerns. However, in my homelab this is an acceptable risk. Using the VMWare Web Interface, do Host > Services >…

The free license option for VMWare ESXi lacks the backup APIs enabled by a vSphere license. Here is a simple script that I use instead to backup my guest VMs on my VMWare ESXi running on a Raspberry Pi 4. The script assumes: Use SSH,…

A recent experience demonstrated how Denial of Service countermeasures in network switches can prevent VMWare ESXi NFS datastores working. I recently upgraded the network switches in my home lab. By default, my new switches have a denial of service prevention feature that detect the following…

Outbound firewalling is an important step towards improving the security of your network, data and users, but common consumer and SME router devices cannot block outbound traffic, leaving many at risk. If commercial solutions are not an option then free open-source firewall software can run…

A significant proportion of your Internet traffic is likely to be concerned with tracking you to serve you with ever more intrusive adverts. Use an Ad Blocker like PiHole to firstly block ads and tracking, and then to build a Protective DNS service to protect…

WMWare's vision to push their HyperVisor to the network edge has enabled ESXi to run on small ARM devices such as the Raspberry Pi 4. Having lived with the ESXi 7.0 on Arm Fling on a Raspberry Pi 4 for just over a year now,…