Before I do anything with VMware ESXi I do this first

For those that are running VMware ESXi in their home lab or production environments, there are many configurations that you will likely want to make on your ESXi host. Many of the configuration changes that need to be made will help to prepare your host for high availability, proper time synchronization, network configuration, storage, licensing, and adding your ESXi hosts to vCenter Server. In this video, I cover the first things I do on a VMware ESXi installation.

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Introduction to configuration changes to VMware ESXi - 0:00
Configuring the management interface - 0:48
Describing the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) - 1:12
Configuring the management network - 1:33
Network adapter configuration - 1:45
Adding an additional network adapter for the management interface - 2:00
Configuring a specific VLAN for management traffic - 2:32
Setting a static IP address - 3:39
DNS configuration and DNS servers - 3:52
Setting the hostname - 4:00
DNS suffixes for DNS search suffixes - 4:13
Applying the changes and restarting the management network - 4:35
Logging into the ESXi host client - 4:55
Enabling SSH on your ESXi host - 5:12
Testing SSH connectivity to the ESXi host - 5:24
Patching the VMware ESXi host - 5:35
Software profiles and how they are used - 5:58
Getting the software profile - 6:06
Using the esxcli software profile update to update the ESXi server - 7:01
Setting the NTP server configuration in VMware ESXi - 7:35
Starting the NTP service - 8:38
Pointing your ESXi host to a syslog server - 9:03
Restarting the syslog service - 9:46
Adding the software iSCSI adapter - 9:54
Configuring iSCSI software adapter - 10:33
Adding a standalone ESXi host to a vCenter Server - 11:20
Beginning the add host wizard in vSphere Client to add to vCenter Server - 12:05
Behavior of the host after first adding to vCenter Server - 13:05
Adding VMkernel adapters in vSphere on your ESXi hosts - 13:29
Beginning the process to add VMkernel adapters and IP addresses - 14:00
Configuring the port properites - 14:25
Licensing the ESXi host - 15:22
Adding the license in the host client - 15:48
Adding a license in vCenter Server - 16:20
Concluding thoughts on ESXi settings I add on my VMware ESXi hosts - 17:32

VMware ESXi 8.0 Host client 2:

Upgrade to ESXi 8.0 in three ways:

VMware vSphere 8 download links:

[danielastolarz]

Just completed the watch, moving on to implementing all of the steps on my test host. Thanks for your thorough and clear howto video!

[peterbata]

Clear and Precise. Just the way I like it. Thank you for sharing your time and expertise with us. Much appreciated.

[muthyalakirankumar]

Really helpful video covers all operational build tasks

[jamminwithjam]

This was absolutely phenomenal... Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[BOOSTEDDUDE]

Thanks for this video. I'm getting prepared to help upgrade an environment that has lots of ESXi patches listed as Critical. I'm hoping to take the best approach possible.

[raphaelgmur]

That was a really awesome video! Thank you very much! 👍😁

[nalinavijitharan]

Thank you so much Clear content and professional way of explaining

[JasonsLabVideos]

AWESOME Awesome content, some of these things are really good practices !! Good work Brandon.

[sahayn]

Thank you so much for the excellent information.

[bounponekeokhamphiew]

Thank you for explaining, it helped a lot.

[screamingiraffe]

some really useful info, thank you for creating and sharing.

[williamrgrant]

Great content, thank you!

I would suggest applying a high pass filter to your mic in post, perhaps around 80-100 Hz.
I'm listening on in-ear headphones and there is a fairly loud bump occasionally.
It probably doesn't come through if editing on a laptop.

[dvinpp]

Followed your guide to do an upgrade and worked great. Thanks.

The video is good but on my system there was a sync issue between audio and video, which I find very distracting. Not sure if it my system or the video.

[miguellombana]

This tutorial rocked right up until the point where I tried to setup the new ports for vMotion (15:00 Min) my setup doesn't use VLans and the VLan field doesn't populate and thereby fails... still working on a solution but overall thanks for the help from this vid, helped me get my home lab to another level!

[restrictanon]

Hello Brandon Lee,
thank you for your great videos and detailed information.
A question: I want to run a script or "esxcli" command during each ESXi boot. What's the best way to do that?

[tekviper]

Every vSphere host in any shop / Lab / Enterprise I work I enable "ShareForceSalting = 0" and "Mem.ShareScanTime = 20" This setting pretty much dedeuplicates used memory blocks and give you the ability to run more VMs without swapping. And checks memory blocks every 20 min. These can be set in the advanced system settings.

[Muhammadsaeed-seti]

Thank you for this effort, I am a newbie, I was wondering if you can tell us how to access our servers from outside network, your teacher method is great, I would love to learn more

[matthewella]

can you do a video on how to show the FQDN in vCenter instead of the ip address, without a active directory server

[L-Minus]

What about backing up vCenter and the ESXi host configs?

[gastonhitw]

hi, I'm emulating esxi in vmware, if I want to add vm's to the esxi how many resourses should I give to my esxi? I'm running everything in my laptop