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VMware ESXi 6.5 - Replacing the default SSL/TLS certificates

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 17:43:47 +0000

One of my weird hobbies is installing legitimate SSL certificates EVERYWHERE. Here’s steps for replacing the default self-signed garbage SSL certificates you get out of the box with VMware ESXi:

Steps Get your SSL cert, obviously. You’ll need a .key file and a .crt. (If you need help at this stage, take a look at my SSL cert management scripts on github.) Enable SSH access to your ESXi box. Login as root over ssh. (If you don’t know about this, perhaps this whole process is not for you at this time) From your root ssh session to your ESXi box, follow these steps:

VMware ESXi 6.5 Hypervisor on Dell 690

Wed, 09 Aug 2017 01:12:19 +0000

I picked up a Dell 690 from an e-recycler for $11. I picked it out knowing that I can kit-it-out with 64GB of slow DDR2 FBDIMM RAM for about $80 and I can replace the CPUs to get to 8 threads for another $30ish. I somewhat foolishly assumed VMware ESXi 6.5 would just run on this rig. I was wrong, kind of.

Annoyingly, this motherboard seems fully electrically compatible with CPUs that are both dirt-cheap and supported by ESXi, however after a fair search of the internet, I found that the bios does not support such CPUs. The most conclusive findings I encountered were these.

Add RSYNC to VMware ESXi 5.x

Fri, 11 Jul 2014 15:34:41 +0000

I’ve recently sufficiently mastered rsync to use it everywhere, constantly.

ESXi doesn’t have rsync bundled, cause you know, when 16GB flash drives cost $8, you need to keep your hypervisor footprint down to a few MB? I dunno.

Anyway, here’s where to download a build of rsync that’ll work on there:�http://damiendebin.net/blog/2013/12/06/esxi-5-dot-1-and-rsync/

I just SCPed the file over in to my /opt/ and then symlinked it in to my path.