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Is Free VMware vSphere ESXi 8 back?

According to the release notes for VMware vSphere 8.0U3e, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) can now be downloaded free of charge from the Broadcom support portal:

Broadcom makes available the VMware vSphere Hypervisor version 8, an entry-level hypervisor. You can download it free of charge from the Broadcom Support portal.

Next, I use my own (non-corporate) account without any SiteIDs added.

In the Free Downloads section, we can find VMware vSphere Hypervisor:

With the only one release available – 8.0U3e:

After reading and accepting terms and conditions, we can download the ISO:

After installing, the first thing we want to see is the license:

We can see that the expiration date is set to never, and the host is limited to 8-way virtual SMP, meaning that you cannot power on the VM that contains more than 8 vCPUs.

In the example above, you can see that I cannot power on a 16-vCPUs VM. However, I can power three VMs with 8 vCPUs each:

And this is the same way as it worked before. This is a suitable option for extra-small deployments, labs, and testing. For large environments, you should definitely consider purchasing VVF or VCF licenses.

Regarding the license key, you don’t need to get one as it was before. It is already installed in the ISO. According to the screenshots shared on Reddit, all downloads use the same key.

Replacing Nutanix Prism Element and Prism Central certificates

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how to replace certificates for both Prisms – Element and Central.

In this article, we will look at how to generate self-signed certificates and add them to the Prism Element and to the Prism Central.

Nutanix AOS 7.0.1, AHV 10.0.1 and PC 2024.3.1 Releases

Nutanix released new minor versions of AOS, AHV, and PC with a few new features and many resolved issues in AOS, AHV, and Prism Central.

If you’re waiting for the first patch to upgrade your clusters to AOS 7 and PC 2024.3, make sure to read the release notes, resolved issues, and known issues. Maybe it’s time to upgrade.

For AOS 7.0.1 and AHV 10.0.1, there is a new feature:
AMD Turin Processor Support – Starting with AOS 7.0.1, AOS supports nodes based on the AMD Turin processor, such as Nutanix G10 platforms.
Currently, Nutanix has qualified the AMD Turin processor for Lenovo HX platforms.

For Prism Central 2024.3.1:
There are few features related to NCM, but I want to highlight a new and highly anticipated feature called Power Monitor – Starting with pc.2024.3.1, you can gain insights into the power consumption of your IT infrastructure by enabling the Power Monitor feature. Power Monitor collects real-time power usage data at the node and cluster levels and displays this historical data as line charts on the Prism Central dashboard.

You can read more on how Prowe Usage works in the documentation.

All releases have a lot of resolved issues, and you can check them here (requiring authentication):
Resolved Issues – AOS 7.0.1;
Resolved Issues – AHV 10.0.1;
Resolved Issues – pc.2024.3.1.

What’s new at Nutanix University? New certification NCP-CN is Now Available for Scheduling

Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Native (NCP-CN) 6.10 is ready to leave the beta state and exam is now open for scheduling with exam appointments starting on Tuesday, April 22

For those, who do not know, what NCP-CN is, it is the certification that measures your ability to deploy, configure, optimize, and perform administrative tasks on a Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP).

The best way to start preparing is to check the blueprint guide. You can find the blueprint guide here.

To schedule the exam, use the My Certification section on Nutanix University. Next, find the Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Native 6.10 certification and click schedule. You will be forwarded to the PSI page, where you can select a suitable date and time.

In addition, I highly recommend checking the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform Administration (NKAP) free online course to get the knowledge on the NKP solution. Also, if you have an opportunity, I recommend visiting this course live, because it includes a lot of hands-on labs, and it really can boost your knowledge on NKP, especially if you have a poor practice experience.

Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3.1 Release

Veeam released the new version of Backup and Replication software 12.3.1.1139, which includes new features and addresses major security vulnerabilities.

First is CVE-2025-23120 with the critical severity level (9.9 score) – A vulnerability allowing remote code execution (RCE) by authenticated domain users.

This vulnerability only affects domain-joined backup servers, which is against best practices, by the way.

This issue affects Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3.0.310 and all earlier v12 builds. Consider updating ASAP.

Now let’s move to the new features and fixes. I will not show everything, because the list is too big, but I will point out a few I really love.

Platform support:

VMware vSphere 9.0 readiness. The official support will be confirmed with the full testing of the GA build when it becomes available. This means that after vSphere 9.0 is out, it is better to wait for Veeam to officially support this release before upgrading the vSphere environment.

Nutanix AHV – Removed the experimental support designation for malware detection, guest file indexing, and application-aware processing, except database log file shipping, which will still be considered experimental.

Proxmox VE – Updated ProxmoxVE plug-in enables the usage of non-root users to register Proxmox, support for Open vSwitch (OVS) networking, Object Storage API (SOSAPI), Nested Pools for backup jobs scope, and brings further backup performance improvements.

Enhancements:

One I really love for vSphere is – Instant VM Recovery engine improvements deliver a 5x increased number of simultaneous instant VM recoveries: up to 1000 VMs per backup server and up to 200 VMs per vPowerNFS server.

TLS connection support for the PostgreSQL configuration database has been added for improved security when hosting the database on an external server.

New ISO-based update distribution reduces downtime by accelerating update installation and eliminates the additional disk space requirement on the backup server, which was previously needed for unpacking the update before its installation.

New REST API capabilities include changing existing password records, rescanning all backup repository types, downloading metadata for Unstructured Data backups, and performing backup deletion.

New PowerShell capabilities include connection to Veeam Vaults, querying, and restoring protected Microsoft Entra ID conditional access policies.

There are more than 40 additional features, enhancements, and resolved issues, make sure you read the corresponding KB.

In addition, consider updating ASAP if CVE-2025-23120 addresses your installation.

Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV – Restoring Nutanix AHV Backup Proxy Configuration

This topic is related to the previous post when we were talking about connecting to the existing Nutanix AHV appliance, but what should we do if we completely lose it or we need to restore the previous configuration? – The answer is simple: we can restore its configuration from the backup.

In this article, we will look at how to restore Nutanix AHV Backup Proxy from the configuration backup.

Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV – Connecting to the existing Nutanix AHV Backup Proxy

Did you know that you can connect the VBR Server to the existing Nutanix AHV Backup Proxy (Appliance) instead of deploying a new one in case it was removed from the backup infrastructure for some reason, or you just want to connect an appliance previously used by another backup server?

I never thought that I needed this feature until I reinstalled the Prism Central in my lab. After that, I had to remove the old PC instance from the Veeam Inventory, which requires removing the existing proxy from the configuration as well.

Next, I will provide a quick walkthrough on how to connect to the existing proxy.

Using Nutanix Kubernetes Engine in Prism Central pc.2024.x

With the release of Prism Central PC 2024.x, you may see significant improvements and changes in the functionality, features, user interfaces, and menus.

In my opinion, one of the major features added is the marketplace providing us the ability to deploy additional PC components, including NKE.

Although I believe that the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform is the future of Kubernetes management in Nutanix, I am still a big fan of the Nutanix Kubernetes Engine and want to demonstrate how to deploy NKE with pc.2024.x.

Let me remind you that I have a few blog posts on NKE, and all of them can be found using the NKE tag.

Learning Terraform using Nutanix Terraform Provider

This year I decided to learn a bit about automation and infrastructure as code (IAC), and in this article, I would demonstrate some Terraform basics I have learned using the Nutanix Terraform Provider.

During this article, we will learn how to:
1. Install Terraform;
2. Connect Nutanix Terraform Provider;
3. Upload cloud image to the Nutanix Cluster;
4. Deploy a Nutanix Subnet, including IP-address Management;
5. Deploy a VM and connect it to the provisioned subnet;
6. Run a little cloud-init script to create a user in the deployed VM.

What’s new at Nutanix University? Updated certifications NCP-US and NCP-DB, and beta exams opportunities

Update: The NCP-US and NCP-DB beta exams have reached capacity and are now closed.

The year begins with the updated Nutanix certifications! Nutanix Certified Professional – Unified Storage (NCP-US) and Nutanix Certified Professional – Database Management (NCP-DB) were updated to version 6.10.

Nutanix Certified Professional – Unified Storage (NCP-US) – certification related to the Nutanix Storage Services: Files, Objects, and Volumes. Blueprint Guide;
Nutanix Certified Professional – Database Management (NCP-DB) – as you can guess from the name, the certification is all about Nutanix Database Services (former ERA). Blueprint Guide.

As usual, both exams are in a beta state and available totally free for the first 250 participants; just use the discounts during checkout: NCPDB610BETA for NCP-DB and NCPUS610BETA for NCP-US exam. You can find those certifications on the PSI cert lists. The last test date to test is March 2, 2025.

Along with the certifications, two courses were updated, and you should use them during preparation:
Nutanix Unified Storage Administration (NUSA);
Nutanix Database Management & Automation (NDMA).

Both courses are available for free at Nutanix University.