Nested ESXi 6.5 guest customization

[pgerritse]

Problem:

In vRealize we have ESXi6.5 blueprints for students to be able to deploy nested virtualization labs. However, if a student deploys 2 machines from that blueprint, these machines get the same ID's and their attached storage also gets the same ID.

Question: Is it possible to do guest customization for ESXi 6.5 vm's?

[daphnissov · Accepted solution]

Yes, fortunately now nested ESXi 6.5 does provide guest customization via a Linux-type specification. The networking information only gets applied to the first vmkernel interface (so as to provide management capabilities), but from there you can customize it to your liking. lamw wrote a blog post that covered this feature back in October, so I highly recommend you give it a read and also follow the link as it contains the two edits you'll need to make in your template. Of specific interest in your case is removal of the system UUID inside esx.conf.