VM Install

Welcome to VMInstall.com

VMinstall.org - single point of news for virtualization (visit)
VMware Virtual Infrastructure is as hot as ever and your feedback is wanted.
Download Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V (download)

Step One – Start your VMware ESX Install by Creating a Checklist of Important Information

Step one in our step-by-step VM installation process is to make a pre-installation checklist with important information.

Before you even think about installing any software, make a checklist. The checklist will save you hours of frustration later on when the troubleshooting begins, which believe me, you will troubleshoot a lot while performing the simplest VM install.

I’ve found VMware documentation seriously lacking on this important step. We will go through our list of what you need to know during the install.

VMware ESX Server Pre-install Checklist:

1. Is your hardware supported? Check the HCL.

2. How many NICs will you have per host?

3. Is your network setup?

4. Is your DNS setup?

5. Make a list of name for your host servers. FQDN are required.

6. Is your storage configured right (SAN or NAS). iqn’s, igroups, LUNS, etc…

7. Do you have servers for running the VirtualCenter and MS SQL?

8. Do you have a list of IP addresses for your virtual networks?

9. Is your external network configured right? (VLANS, Routing)

10. Do you have the right license for your software?

11. Will you setup a license server for Flex licenses?

12. What patches do you need on your ESX host?

13. How big and how many LUNs of storage do I need?

14. What are best practices for installing ESX?

15. What are …

This is only the beginning. What else should be on this list?

Originally posted 2008-05-23 17:27:59. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

ESX Swap File Size Best Practice

Do a custom installation of ESX and make your swap partition 1024 MB instead of the default 542 MB. Later you will need the room when you have to increase your service console memory from 272 MB to 512 (800 MB Max) to keep your systems from crashing when you access them from within a [...]

Squeezing Virtual Machines out CPU Cores

Are you trying to squeeze every CPU cycle out of your dual or quad core processors? Unfortunately for those who like to over-clock CPUs for gaming, over utilizing CPU doesn’t quite work the same on virtual hosts (ESX or Hyper-V).

From my experience, I know you can get anywhere from 8 – 10 vCPUs per core, [...]

VMware VM Guest SWAP File Best Practice

VM guest swap file diagram

Answering the question that always seems to get asked, “what is the best practice for the VM SWAP file?”
I have put this method through bench testing and found it to have the best performance, step by step for VM SWAP file configuration is:

Set up a data store in each ESX cluster [...]

Best Fit Virtualization Criteria Checklist

Finding servers which are the “Best Fit” canadates for virtualization can be tricky. I have put together the following criteria checklist to help determine whether a new server provision or a P2V should use virtualization.

The Best Fit checklist uses my own criteria and weight recommendations but it can be modified with more liberal values. However, [...]

VMware Infrastructure 3 Demo Video by VMware

This video shows a demo of VI 3 which is an older version of VI but the video demonstrates most of the features of VI such as: VirtualCenter, HA, DRS, vMotion which are included in VI [...]

3rd Party Tools for VMware, Hyper-V and XenServer?

I can’t keep up with all the 3rd party tools that are coming out on a daily basis for VMware, Hyper-V and XenServer. Have you used a tool lately that you would like to share a review on with VMinstall and its readers. We’d love to hear from you.

var addthis_pub = ‘editor’;
var addthis_language = ‘en’;var [...]

Virtual Machines Running or Registered on Multiple ESX Servers

Does your vCenter flicker when browsing clusters? There could be a problem…

Over the last 3 years I’ve seen this happen twice and both times it was not good. Both cases were caused from an HA event that was interrupted, which left multiple VMs registered on more than one host. Fortunately, the VM stays running and the fix does not cause [...]