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    <title>Vmware on My Blogs</title>
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    <description>Recent content in Vmware on My Blogs</description>
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      <title>Building a Hybrid Cloud Monitoring Stack with Zabbix, ZeroTier, and Azure</title>
      <link>/posts/zabbix-homelab-monitoring/</link>
      <pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <guid>/posts/zabbix-homelab-monitoring/</guid>
      <description>&lt;h2 id=&#34;-problem&#34;&gt;🧩 Problem&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I wanted a centralized monitoring platform for my homelab that could monitor:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;On-premises VMware ESXi hosts&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Linux virtual machines&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Windows systems&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;HPE iLO hardware management&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Cloud-hosted workloads&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The challenge was that most of my infrastructure lives behind NAT at home, and I did not want to expose services publicly or configure complex port forwarding.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;hr&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&#34;-solution-overview&#34;&gt;🛠️ Solution Overview&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I built a &lt;strong&gt;hybrid monitoring architecture&lt;/strong&gt; using:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Zabbix 7.0 LTS&lt;/strong&gt; hosted in Azure&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ZeroTier&lt;/strong&gt; for secure private connectivity&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Zabbix Proxy&lt;/strong&gt; running locally in my homelab&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;VMware API monitoring&lt;/strong&gt; for ESXi&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SNMP monitoring&lt;/strong&gt; for HPE iLO&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This design allows cloud-hosted monitoring while keeping home infrastructure private.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Installing ESXi 8 on Dell OptiPlex (Fixing Pink Screen of Death - CPU Mismatch)</title>
      <link>/posts/setup-esxi-8-in-an-optiplex/</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <guid>/posts/setup-esxi-8-in-an-optiplex/</guid>
      <description>&lt;h2 id=&#34;-problem&#34;&gt;🧩 Problem&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I attempted to install ESXi 8 on my Dell OptiPlex homelab machine, but during boot, I encountered a &lt;strong&gt;Pink Screen of Death (PSOD)&lt;/strong&gt; with errors like:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Fatal CPU mismatch on feature&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;HW feature incompatibility detected&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&#34;image-description&#34;&gt;This prevented ESXi from installing or booting successfully.
!&lt;img alt=&#34;Image Description&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34; src=&#34;/images/Pasted%20image%2020260320194350.png&#34;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&#34;-root-cause&#34;&gt;🛠️ Root Cause&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The issue is caused by modern Intel CPUs (12th Gen and newer) using a &lt;strong&gt;hybrid architecture&lt;/strong&gt; with:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Performance cores (P-cores)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Efficiency cores (E-cores)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;ESXi expects uniform CPU cores, so it crashes when it detects different core types.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
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