One of the interesting things coming up in VMware Infrastructure 4 or vSphere as it is now known is the new licensing options aimed at securing a bigger slice of the lucrative SME marketplace.
Many SME’s were put off on the pricing of VMware Infrastructure 3 with Enterprise and Virtual Centre licences for a couple of [...]
Filed under: Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESX/ESXi | No Comments »
Software company Veeam have today released v3 of their free FastSCP program which now supports coping files to and from ESXi hosts without any hacking or modification required on ESXi.
The solution is able to copy powered off virtual machines to or from a Windows machine, jobs can be scheduled if required.
On testing managed a very [...]
Filed under: VMware ESX/ESXi | No Comments »
I’d tried VMware server 2 back in beta but found I couldn’t get on with the new management web interface so stuck with my trusted VMware server 1.0.x
A colleague mentioned recently VMware Server 2 could be managed using the familair VI client usually used to manage ESX hosts.
Sure enough after downloading and installing the latest [...]
Filed under: VMware Server | No Comments »
If you are running ESX or ESXi U2 or above and have an application that creates VMware backups using snapshots (e.g Vizioncore , Veeam ) you may notice sometimes you are left with a snapshot called Consolidated Helper Snapshot followed by a number.
If you try to remove the snapshot on a powered on VM it [...]
Filed under: VMware ESX/ESXi | No Comments »
Received this error today trying to create a new snapshot of a Windows VM guest running on VMware ESXi. VI client showed no existing snapshots, tried reboot of VM and ESXi host but still unable to create a new snapshot.
Was eventually able to create the snapshot by renaming the snapshot definition file for the [...]
Filed under: VMware ESX/ESXi | 1 Comment »
You can use the free VMware converter tool to import Microsoft virtual machines into VMware. Most of the Microsoft product line can be downloaded for evaluation in a pre configured virtual machine format. Microsoft virtual machines come with a virtual disk with a file extension of VHD and configuration file with the extension [...]
Filed under: Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESX/ESXi, VMware Server | No Comments »
Had a situation today where a customer asked me if I could monitor the APC UPS running his ESXi server. My plan was to install Powerchute on one of the Windows guest virtual machines running on the ESXi host and then use pass through to the comm port on the host, I’ve used this method [...]
Filed under: VMware ESX/ESXi | No Comments »
Despite the service console being removed in VMware ESXi an unsupported workaround can be used to enabled a limited CLI and SSH access to an ESXi host.
The procedure is as follows:
From a screen and keyboard connected to the ESXi host press ALT+F1 keys
Type: unsupported
Type in your root password
From [...]
Filed under: VMware ESX/ESXi | No Comments »
Tried to install a 64 bit Windows 2003 VM today, threw up an error when trying to power on the VM, turned out Intel-VT hadn’t been enabled in the BIOS of the ESX host which is required for 64 bit guest support.
Filed under: VMware ESX/ESXi | No Comments »
Had and issue today with virtual machines running on an ESX host. the VM’s were exhibiting poor performance and relatively high CPU usage even when doing very little.
Problem was eventually traced to Intel-VT not being enabled in the ESX host BIOS, as soon as the ESX host had Intel-VT enabled in the BIOS performance increased [...]
Filed under: VMware ESX/ESXi | No Comments »