Last week VMware released vCloud Director SP 8.10.1 Build 4655197 and while it was mainly a patch release there was one new feature added which was a couple of additional UI settings under the General Tab of a Virtual Machine.

New boot customization options added to delay the boot time and to enter into the BIOS setup screen. You can use the vCloud Director Web console or the vCloud API to set Boot Delay and EnterBIOS mode options.

This might seem like a small and meaningless setting, but you would be surprised how many times I experienced customers frustrated at the fact they could not get into the BIOS easily via the VM Console or have a long enough boot delay to trigger a boot from alternative media option.

The previous General Tab looked like this:

The 8.10.1 General Tab looks like this:

You can see that you now have an check box to Enter BIOS Setup and set the Boot Delay. These settings follow the rules of vSphere meaning the Boot delay is in milliseconds and can only be modified if the Virtual Machine is powered off. I had this image open with the System Administrator account which explains why you see the a few more VM related bits of information telling you what Host and Datastore the VM is residing on and what the name of the VM is in vSphere.

Again, this is a simple but extremely useful addition but continues to show VMware’s commitment to improving the vCD platform even before the big UI enhancements start to filter through next year.

#LongLivevCD

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