Category: VMware

MacOS in VMware Workstation

June 6, 2025 / chronoit / 0 Comments

I recently decided to virtualize macOS on my Windows workstation in order to create an environment for testing software installations within a snapshot-capable setup. VMware Workstation does not support this functionality by default; however, as is often the case, the open-source community has provided a solution through a tool called Unlocker.

https://github.com/paolo-projects/auto-unlocker

The key point to remember about this product is that it must be uninstalled using the same executable file before performing a software upgrade, as failing to do so can lead to problematic issues. Once the software has been updated, the tool can be run again to restore the unlocked functionality.

VMware – Using PowerCLI to generate install isos from patch packages

January 29, 2024 / chronoit / 0 Comments

Load powershell and ensure powerCLI is enabled

pwsh
Import-Module VMware.PowerCLI

Add your zip file as a software repository

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot -DepotUrl /Users/chronoit/Downloads/staging/8_0/VMware-ESXi-8.0a-20842819-depot.zip

View your repository for available packages

PS /Users/chronoit/Downloads/staging/8_0> Get-ESXimageProfile 

Name                           Vendor          Last Modified   Acceptance Level
----                           ------          -------------   ----------------
ESXi-8.0a-20842819-no-tools    VMware, Inc.    11/24/2022 5:4… PartnerSupported
ESXi-8.0a-20842819-standard    VMware, Inc.    12/8/2022 12:0… PartnerSupported

Create an iso using your preferred profile

Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile "ESXi-8.0a-20842819-standard" -ExportToIso -FilePath '/Users/chronoit/Downloads/staging/8_0/ESXi-8.0a-20842819-standard.iso'

Other useful commands

Sorting in powershell for large software depots

Get-ESXimageProfile | Sort-Object -Descending -Property @{Expression={$_.Name.Substring(0,10)}},@{Expression={$_.CreationTime.Date}},Name | Select -first 5 | FT -AutoSize

VMware – Installing Powershell for Intel Macos

January 26, 2024 / chronoit / 0 Comments

As a system engineer who uses a mac I often run into problems with software that wasn’t really designed or documented properly for macos users. This guide will get you up and running with a basic PowerCLI environment.

Recommended Software Versions

macos Ventura 13.6.4
macos Python 3.9.6
PowerCLI Recommended Python3.7.X (no longer available in brew)

Install brew

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Install prerequisites

brew install xz
brew install pyenv
brew install [email protected]
pyenv install 3.7.17
/Users/<youruser>/.pyenv/versions/3.7.17/bin/python3 -m pip install six psutil lxml pyopenssl

Since Python 3.7 has been removed from brew (fully deprecated) we will want to move to pyenv to manage your python installs (which you should probably do anyway). You need to install [email protected] as this is a requirement for powercli and is a package that brew held back as it's used by multiple packages so it's still installable separately from brew python.

Install Powershell

brew install powershell/tap/powershell

Install PowerCli

 pwsh
 Install-Module VMware.PowerCLI -Scope CurrentUser

Configure PowerCLI

Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -PythonPath /Users/<youruser>/.pyenv/versions/3.7.17/bin/python3  -Scope User

You now have a functional Powershell environment.

Other Useful commands

Listing all available versions of powercli
Find-Module -AllVersions VMware.PowerClI

Discover your currently installed version of modules
Get-Module -Name VMware.* | Select-Object -Property Name,Version

Reset your Powershell environment
Get-InstalledModule | Uninstall-Module -Force