Latest posts

September 21, 2025bytheDXT

One of many advantages of passing the VCP-VCF (VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation) exam is that you can get access to home lab licensing. The license is valid for 365 days and can be used in non-production environments. An extra bonus is that if you also happen to have a VMUG Advantage subscription, you can renew the licensing for another 2 years.

In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to get your VMware home lab licensing after passing a VMware qualifying exam.

The Process

To start, you need to pass the VCP-VCF exam. If you haven’t passed it yet, I’ve created the blog post, Passing VCP-VCF Admin Exam, which covers what I did to pass my VCP-VCF Admin exam.
Once you pass the exam, you will receive an email letting you know that you are eligible for home lab licenses.

Log in to the Broadcom Support portal https://support.broadcom.com/ using the same account you used to register for the VMware exam.

…

IT

September 7, 2025bytheDXT

The Minisforum MS-A2 is an awesome system to use in a home lab. It does have one downside, and that is that even though it has a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 2.0 chip, it is a TPM 2.0 CRB (Command-Response buffer) chip, which is likely useful for a lot of use cases. However, it is not compatible with VMware ESXi. VMware ESXi requires a TPM 2.0 FIFO (First-In-First-Out) chip. Fortunately, you can disable the TPM.

In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to disable the TPM on a Minisforum MS-A2.

The Process

Get into BIOS by pressing the Del key.
Select Setup.

Select the Advanced menu.

…

IT

BIOS ESXi Home Lab How To Minisforum TPM VMware

August 10, 2025bytheDXT

This year I went to EUC World Amplify, which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, from August 4th to August 7th.

EUC World Amplify is the second time World of EUC has put on a conference. The first one was in 2024 and was called EUC World Independence. Which I also attended. You can read about my experience in my blog post I Went to EUC World Independence.

If you have never heard of World of EUC, they are an independent non-profit organization built to bridge the gap across all the EUC (End User Computing) vendors and to create a place where everyone can communicate regardless of which EUC product they are using.

In this post, I will detail my experience at EUC World Amplify 2025.

Travel and Registration Day

The first day of my adventure to Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA was a travel day, which started with a flight from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, directly to Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Once I made it to the hotel, I checked in. The hotel I was staying at was the Graduate by Hilton, which is themed to match the city it is in, which was a cool experience, as I have never been to a hotel that had a theme. Even the hotel keycards were themed.

After some time, it was time for the Registration and Opening Reception, which took place at the hotel.

I got all registered and picked up my badge.

Day 1

The first full day of EUC World Amplify took place at the McNamara Alumni Center, which is directly connected to the hotel via a tunnel.

The day started with a short and sweet welcome note from the board of directors of World of EUC.

…

Daniel Goes Outside IT

Daniel Goes Outside EUC World Minneapolis video vlog World of EUC youtube

July 27, 2025bytheDXT

A feature of Microsoft Intune is the ability to package and distribute applications to users. Before you can distribute applications to users, you need to package them.

In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to package an application as a Win32 application that can be used with Intune.

The Process

Before we can start with packaging an application, we need the Microsoft Win32 content prep tool, which can be obtained from the official Microsoft GitHub repository. https://github.com/Microsoft/Microsoft-Win32-Content-Prep-Tool

Download the Microsoft Win32 Content Prep Tool.
Extract the Win32 Content Prep Tool.

When you run the Win32 Content Prep Tool, you will need to provide a directory that contains your install file and/or install script. The Win32 Content Prep Tool will effectively zip up everything in the folder that you provide it with and will create an .intunewin file that can be used with Intune.

Due to the way the Win32 Content Prep Tool functions, I create an input directory and a separate folder for each application to keep things organized.

Create a folder for your installation files.

In my example, I will be creating a Win32 package for GlobalProtect. I have created a folder named DXT-GlobalProtect-Install-v1.0.0, and I placed my installation script in it.

Create a folder for the Win32 package output.

I will create a folder named output.

…

Booting

When the Minisforum boots, you see the Minisforum splash screen.

When the Minisforum is booting, you can press F7 to access the boot menu or press Del to enter the BIOS.

F7 Boot Menu Screen

Delete Menu Screen

When you press Delete, you are presented with an initial menu that allows you to select several options, including Setup, Boot, UEFI Shell, Boot Options, and BBS Menu.

Setup will take you into the BIOS.
Boot will boot the system normally
UEFI Shell tries to load shell.efi from any of the attached devices.
Boot Options will bring up a menu to select a boot device.

BBS Menu (BIOS Boot Spec) will also display a menu to select a boot device.

BIOS Setup

The BIOS Setup has the following menus.

Main
Advanced
Security
Boot
Save & Exit

Main

For System Date, you can enter the date.

…

IT

BIOS Home Lab Minisforum

June 14, 2025bytheDXT

I recently deployed an HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) MSA (Modular Smart Array) 2040 SAN (Storage Area Network) Storage unit in my home lab.

In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to set up the HPE MSA 2040 SAN Storage with iSCSI.

The Process

Login to the HPE SMU (Storage Management Utility).

The default username is manage, and the default password is !manage.

Network Setup

The first part we should do is configure the iSCSI network.

Click on System.

Click on Action > Set Up Host Ports.

Configure your ports as needed.

In my setup, ports A1, B1, A3, and B3 are iSCSI path A and ports A2, B2, A4, and B4 are iSCSI path B.

Pool Setup

Next, we should set up our disk pools.

Click on Pools.

Click on Action > Add Disk Group.

Select the Type.

I will select Virtual.

Select the RAID Level.

I will Select RAID-10.

Select the Pool.

The pool selection is for which controller will be the primary controller for the pool. It’s a good idea to make a disk group per controller to maximize the performance of the MSA.

…

IT

Home Lab How To HPE iSCSI MSA SAN Storage

May 11, 2025bytheDXT

I recently passed the VCP-VCF Admin exam, specifically the 2V0-11.25 version, and I want to share my experience with the VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation Administrator exam.

I typically don’t get certifications as I don’t really see the point, and it’s often not a very good benchmark of actual skills and understanding. However, with the recent changes to VMware home lab licensing, to gain access to the home lab licenses, you need to have a VMUG Advantage membership and pass a VCF exam. Due to this, I took the VCF Admin exam and passed.

My VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation Administrator Certification

This post will share my experience studying and taking the VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 Administrator 2V0-11.25 exam.

Exam Details

There are two exam codes for the VCF Admin exam. Exam code 2V0-11.24 is the older 2024 version. Exam code 2V0-11.25 is the updated 2025 version. I’ve only taken the updated 2025 version of the VCF Admin exam.

The VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 Administrator 2V0-11.25 exam contains 60 multiple-choice questions, and you have 135 minutes to complete the exam. You need a score of 300 points or higher to pass the exam. The exam may contain unscored questions, but you won’t know which questions are unscored.

During the exam, you can flag questions to review at the end before finishing the exam. You can also strikethrough invalid answers by right-clicking them to help narrow down the possible answers.

The questions are pulled from a pool of questions, meaning if two people take the exam, they may not have the same questions. When I took the exam, I only got multiple choice questions however, some of the questions in the pool may be matching or sequencing-type questions.

Studying

To prepare for the VCF Admin exam, I attended six weekly 1-hour weekly study sessions. The study sessions were organized by Franky Barragan and were hosted by James Tiffany, Stephan McTighe, and Gareth Edwards. The sessions followed the official VMware VCP – VCF Administrator exam guide. The official exam guide can be found here.

All of the study sessions were recorded and have been posted to YouTube. Here is a YouTube playlist of those videos. I highly recommend those videos as they were pivotal to helping me study.

…

IT

Broadcom Certification Exam VCF vExpert VMUG VMware

May 3, 2025bytheDXT

This year, I attended the first-ever VMUG Connect. VMUG Connect is a multiday VMUG (VMware User Group) conference in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA, from April 23rd to April 25th.

If you haven’t heard of VMUG. VMUG is a community of IT people who want to talk and nerd out about VMware products and features. There are around 150,000 VMUG members in 73 countries, and I am one of them.

VMUG hosts an extensive array of events. The events range from local meetups to virtual ones and webcasts. In Calgary, we have a local chapter called VMUG Calgary, which hosts all the local Calgary VMUG meetups.

VMUG also hosts larger, local, full-day events called UserCons. VMUG Connect is like a VMUG UserCon but bigger and longer. It’s almost like a smaller version of VMware Explore.

In this post, I will recap my experience at VMUG Connect 2025.

Traveling Day

The first day of my VMUG Connect adventure was a full day dedicated to travel. I had to take two flights to get to Saint Louis, Missouri, USA, from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The first flight was from Calgary to Dallas, Texas, USA and then to Saint Louis.

Once I made it to the hotel, I checked in and decided to find food. I’ve heard of a fast food place called White Castle but have never tried it. Google Maps told me it would be a 10-minute walk from the hotel, so I decided to venture into Saint Louis to find a White Castle.

The adventure to White Castle was uneventful, and White Castle was pretty good. It’s basically a whole fast-food chain dedicated to sliders.

Day 1

The first day of VMUG Connect began with registering and collecting my badge.

After getting registered, I attended the two sessions that were part of PreConnect, a couple of sessions before VMUG Connect fully started. The sessions were about Private AI and VCF in general. Both sessions were very informative.

…

Daniel Goes Outside IT

Daniel Goes Outside Saint Louis video vlog VMUG VMUG Connect VMware youtube

April 19, 2025bytheDXT

A nice feature with QSFP (Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable) is that you can turn a single QSFP port into 2 or 4 independent ports using a breakout cable.

In my home lab, I have an Nvidia/Mellanox SN2100 switch running Onyx (MLNX-OS), which I use for my iSCSI network. I also have an HPE MSA 2040 SAN. The HPE MSA 2040 SAN only has 10GB SFP (Small Form-factor Pluggable) ports.

I will use a breakout cable to use the SN2100 with the MSA 2040. The breakout cable will connect to the QSFP port on the SN2100 and give me 4 SFP connections that I will connect to the MSA 2040 SFP ports.

In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to split and unsplit an interface on an Nvidia/Mellanox SN2100 switch running Onyx (MLNX-OS).

Split Port

SSH into the switch.
Enter configuration mode with the command configure terminal

Shutdown the interface you want to split out.

The interface I will be splitting is ethernet 1/1. The command I will run is interface ethernet 1/1 shutdown.

To split the interface, we will use the command module-type qsfp-split-4 or the command module-type qsfp-split-2

Split 4 will split the QSFP module into four 25 Gbps ports. Split 2 will split the port into two 50 Gbps ports.

…

Prerequisites

Local admin rights on the Azure AD Connect Server.
Member of ADSyncAdmins.
Account with the Hybrid Identity Administrator or Global Administrator role.
IE Enhanced Security Configuration turned off.
.NET Framework 4.7.2 or higher

TLS 1.2

With the new version of Microsoft Entra Connect, TLS 1.2 is now mandatory. We will check if TLS 1.2 is enabled and enable it if needed.

Checking TLS 1.2

Connect to your Azure AD Connect server.
Open PowerShell ISE as administrator.

Copy and paste the Check TLS 1.2 PowerShell script from Microsoft.
Run the script.

If your output looks like the image below, then you are all set.

If you get an output that says the value is not found, then you need to enable TLS 1.2.

Enabling TLS 1.2

Copy and paste the Enable TLS 1.2 PowerShell script from Microsoft.
Run the script

You will see an output similar to the image below.

Reboot the server so the changes take effect.

Auto Upgrade

Typically, the auto upgrade option for Azure AD Connect helps keep it up to date. However, I’ve seen multiple setups where Azure AD connect was only auto-upgraded to 2.3.6.0, which was released in February of 2024.

An important item about Azure AD Connect and Entra Connect Sync is that not every version is an auto-upgrade release. Version 2.4.129.0 is a version marked as an auto-upgrade release, but I haven’t seen any servers upgrade from 2.3.6.0 to 2.4.129.0, and if you check the event logs. There’s nothing about it, not even trying to auto-upgrade. It’s just radio silence.

Strangely, the auto-upgrade isn’t even triggering on one of the servers I looked at. I know auto upgrades work because that server has completed previous auto upgrades.

Manual Upgrade

Given that the auto-upgrade is not working, we will do a manual in-place upgrade.

Backup

Typically, manual upgrades work without any issues. However, it’s always good to have a backup. We will export our Azure AD Connect settings to a JSON file that we can use to rebuild everything on a new server if needed.

Open Azure AD Connect.

Click on Configure.

Select View or export current configuration and click on Next.

…

IT

Azure AD Azure AD Connect Entra Connect Sync Entra ID How To Microsoft Update Upgrade

Latest posts

VMware Home Lab Licensing

The Process

Minisforum MS-A2 Disable TPM

The Process

I Went to EUC World Amplify 2025

Travel and Registration Day

Day 1

Intune Win32 Packaging

The Process

Minisforum MS-A2 BIOS Options

Booting

F7 Boot Menu Screen

Delete Menu Screen

BIOS Setup

Main

HPE MSA 2040 iSCSI Configuration

The Process

Network Setup

Pool Setup

Passing VCP-VCF Admin Exam

Exam Details

Studying

I Went to VMUG Connect 2025

Traveling Day

Day 1

QSFP Splitting

Split Port