r/vmware

has anyone here actually done a hypervisor-only VMware migration? I’m trying to picture the cutover. Build the new cluster beside ESXi, connect it to the same SAN, move a few low-risk VMs, then reclaim the old hosts one by one? Or did you end up needing temporary storage?

How did you handle zoning, multipathing, VLANs, backups and rollback? and did you keep vCenter up while both environments were running? Would be great to hear a real VMware migration strategy from someone who’s done it. most comparisons of VMware vSphere alternatives never get into this part.

All of our Ent+ (VVF) clusters are on U3j as I keep them updated regularly. This past month was different with the Live Patch eligibility - I can't seem to patch to U3k, most of my clusters have TPM enabled and the image compliance pre-check fails on all of them.

Our "support" is now via TD Synnex and they are not going to be helpful, but I was wondering if anyone else here has had the same issue or knows of a fix. It would be a big lift to disable TPM due to encrypted VMs, but I need to deal with CVE-2026-47876. I exported an offline package, but this is also a huge pain.

Live Patch is not enforced in vLCM at the global or cluster level. Why is the fallback to "legacy" not working? It appears the pre-check invokes the Live Patch installer and the gives up if the host isn't compatible.

vCenter complains:

 Issue on host host.host.tld

•  Compliance results for host host.host.tld are unavailable.

Host status is unknown

An internal error occurred while staging/remediating the host

lifecycle.log tells a little bit more:

[root@HOST:/vmfs/volumes/********-*******-****-************/log] grep -n "QuickPatchInstaller\|secureMount" /var/run/log/lifecycle.log | tail -20

858:2026-08-19T18:12:16Z In(14) lifecycle[2110010]: HostImage:269 Installers initiated are {'quickpatch': <vmware.esximage.Installer.QuickPatchInstaller.QuickPatchInstaller object at 0x2ec4ee1f50>, 'live': <vmware.esximage.InstalleImageInstaller.LiveImageInstaller object at 0x2ec4b6b610>, 'boot': <vmware.esximage.Installer.BootBankInstaller.BootBankInstaller object at 0x2ec4ee1c50>, 'locker': <vmware.esximage.Installer.LockerInstaller.LockerInstaller object ec614c710>}

861:2026-08-19T18:12:17Z In(14) lifecycle[2110010]: HostImage:269 Installers initiated are {'quickpatch': <vmware.esximage.Installer.QuickPatchInstaller.QuickPatchInstaller object at 0x2ec50b0b10>, 'live': <vmware.esximage.InstalleImageInstaller.LiveImageInstaller object at 0x2ec31c74d0>, 'boot': <vmware.esximage.Installer.BootBankInstaller.BootBankInstaller object at 0x2ec698e8d0>, 'locker': <vmware.esximage.Installer.LockerInstaller.LockerInstaller object ec273a2d0>}

1098:2026-08-19T18:12:19Z In(14) lifecycle[2110010]: HostImage:269 Installers initiated are {'quickpatch': <esximage.Installer.QuickPatchInstaller.QuickPatchInstaller object at 0x2ec6afe390>, 'live': <esximage.Installer.LiveImageInr.LiveImageInstaller object at 0x2ec3b390d0>, 'boot': <esximage.Installer.BootBankInstaller.BootBankInstaller object at 0x2ec6b77c50>, 'locker': <esximage.Installer.LockerInstaller.LockerInstaller object at 0x2ecba56350>}

1190:2026-08-19T18:12:20Z In(14) lifecycle[2110010]: QuickPatchInstaller:1279 Attempting to download VIB esx-base partially with Quick Patch payloads.

1198:2026-08-19T18:12:20Z In(14) lifecycle[2110010]: QuickPatchInstaller:1435 Trying to mount payload "qp-esx-base"

1199:2026-08-19T18:12:20Z In(14) lifecycle[2110010]: runcommand:248 runcommand called with: args = '/usr/lib/vmware/secureboot/bin/secureMount.py', outfile = None, returnoutput = True, timeout = 0.0.

1201:2026-08-19T18:12:21Z Er(11) lifecycle[2110010]: QuickPatchInstaller:1457 Unexpected error occurred while attempting to run Quick Patch scan scripts: Current ESXi version does not provide a mechanism to mount a tardisk into a ramdisk.

I wanted to try and setup vSAN on some spare Gen 9 servers I have. Recommendation is to have OS and Data on different controllers. What is the best place to install ESXi OS? Am I better off buying another storage controller just for the OS? I don't think the gen 9 servers have a BOSS card available.

I have a vCenter 5.5 setup at this office. I can't really change it. Apparently the certificate expired for it and I can't get into the machine via vSphere client. Since I can connect to the other machines directly to do things, I haven't given this much effort in resolving for a while (Probably close to a year or two (I know))

But yesterday, Our VMware View (4.6.3 version i believe) PCoIP machines stopped connecting to the remote machines they use. The machines just error out with a 0x1002 error, but if I use the client software if gives a notice that a certificate expired on 7/7. I have no clue how to get this certificate renewed, as I don't even know where it is (the machine with the admin server on it says it doesn't have any when i look at mmc, so I'm unclear).

Can anyone give me any advice on how to get these renewed (or at least the View one, so they can start using it again) - right now I have them RDPing into the machines and it's working, but I'd really like to get working again.

For VCenter, I've tried the options I had from googling.

I tried the following, but that didn't work:

Ensure the customers FQDN, DSN, IP, and all network configuration are correct. Run this VAMI script:
/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_config_net

Note: This brings up a command line utility to check network configuration.

Create a file called allow_regeneration by running this command:
touch /etc/vmware-vpx/ssl/allow_regeneration

Stop the VPXD service by running this command:
service vmware-vpxd stop

Stop the vCenter Single Sign-On service by running the commands:
For vCenter Server 5.5: service vmware-sts-idmd stop
For vCenter Server 5.1: service vmware-sso stop

Regenerate the SSL certificate by running the command:
source vpxd_commonutils; generate_all_certificates replace

Remove the regeneration flag by removing the allow_regeneration file:
rm /etc/vmware-vpx/ssl/allow_regeneration

Reboot vCenter Appliance.

Any help would be welcome. Thanks.

We currently use the HPE Compute Ops Management plug-in 1.4 for integration with vSphere, but according to HPE, this plug-in has reached end of life.

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-a00159266en_us

HPE’s recommended alternative is to migrate to the cloud-based plug-in. This requires, among other things, an HPE Compute Ops Management Secure Gateway.

Are there any system administrators already using this solution? What are your experiences? Or are there better alternatives?

Drink a sturdy scotch and wish me luck!

I’m starting to plan a migration of vCloud Director to VCFA 9.1 and wanted to get more feedback.
Did anyone migrated VCD to VCFA? Is it easy/painless?

What's the purpose of a standby NIC in a Port Group? I understand using them if your NICs are different speeds. But if all of your NICs are the same speed, wouldn't it make sense just to have them all active? Maybe I'm missing something.

system details: laptop with Ryzen7 7735HS and Nvidia 40Series

Use of VMS: Running multiple Vms for attack Simulation(Cybersecurity student pov)

Problem:
i don't know to which one to select from Hyper-V or Virtualization AMD-V/RVI
because VMware Workstation 17.5 has an additional that "Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI"
but after enabling and started Vms ,its state that not supported...
after some diggUps on internet ,I came to know that already Virtualization from Windows is running(HyperV),

which is better Efficient/Reliable to run on my System

We previously had a VMware subscription license. This year we migrated to VME due to the renewal price increases and outright lies from their renewal team. I notified Broadcom in advance that we were not renewing our contract. The date has now passed, and they sent a cease-and-desist letter. I replied that we no longer use the product. Their response was that our company needs to sign and return a certification letter stating that we no longer use the product and it has been fully removed from our network. This seems to be a standard email sent to all former customers. I have sent the email to legal. I’d like to hear from other customers on how they responded.

Did your company sign and return the paperwork? Ignore it? What was the outcome? Normally I wouldn’t be overly concerned about signing it. But their behavior towards our company the past few years has been so unethical I’m trying to be cautious. I’ve never had to deal with a software company acting in bad faith like this, worried about some hidden motive to the paperwork.

I’m most interested in real word examples, not legal opinions. Thanks for any advice!

I like Netbox, but it lacks features for visualizing SDN-based networks.

Which self hosted “source of truth” tool with a similar purpose to Netbox can handle SDN overlay segments that do not use VLAN IDs as identifiers?

SDNs in Cloud networks typically dont identify over a four digitic number, the typically have screen names and (U)UIDs in the background (NSX, OpenStack, Google Cloud?), alphanumeric VPC-IDs in AWS or Ressource IDs in Azure.

We are invested in VLANs (of course), EVPN-VXLAN, NSX, Openstacks Neutron and two of the big cloud providers and I'm looking for an IPAM/DCIM tool that meets all my requirements.

It would also be nice if this tool offered a way to connect overlay networks to the underlay (in the case of EVPN-VXLAN or in case of NSX on which transport zone its running).

USA

Holla,
We currently have approximately 50% of our VMware infrastructure licensed through VCF subscriptions, while the remaining 50% is covered by older perpetual esxi licenses.

The perpetual licenses are still valid, but SnS/support has expired. I’m trying to determine the cleanest and most compliant way to operate this mixed environment (ideally to separate).

Would it be possible to deploy a separate vCenter to manage the clusters using the perpetual licenses, while keeping the VCF-licensed clusters under the VCF management and licensing model?

TL;DR: I need to create another vCenter instance to manage clusters with perpetual licenses, but I'm not sure if that's legal.

Am being asked by supplier to doa full audit prior to releasing a renewal quote
they point me to
https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/368095/vmware-software-audit-data-collection-i.html

One of the files is a script which seem to do a full VM/AD sweep

# Description: The script collects a list of enabled, recently active computers

# from Active Directory and attempts to collect data from each device using

# WMI queries.The data collected from Active Directory includes the machine

# names, operating systems, and age of last activity. The data collected by

# WMI quiry includes the machine name, manufacturer, and model.

And seems to want use WMI and multiple ports across vlans

IS this still in use ?? - has anyone else had to do this ??

I can understand the other script (but have already ran one of their own scripts already to confirm the core count) that does vcenter collection, but the other one is a both a VM and non VM sweep across the entire AD and seems to expect a single domain credential and multiple vlan access etc.

EDIT; Thanks everyone for all the informative replies and suggestions, I thought I was going a bit mad but it seems not so much

We're in the process of moving from Baseline to images for our ESXI hosts. I'm planning to update to 8.0 U3K and I noticed that the latest Dell vendor addon is only at 803-A03. I checked the Broadcom support website and it has the 803-A10 addon.

Do people manually import the latest Dell Addon to Lifecycle manager or do we need to change/add a download source? Anyone have issues with 8.0 U3K with the 803-A10 addon?