Joe Sanchez | VM Install

Creating Windows templates for deployment in Virtual Center

This will cover Windows templates but the same steps are used with Linux, except the Sysprep.

After you get your VM the way you want it, patches, secured and have your applications installed, you right click on it in the inventory windows of your virtual center and select “convert to template”.

Converting to [...]

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 [...]

VMware Infrastructure Toolkit – PowerShell Scripting

PowerGUI

Microsoft PowerShell

scripting is a must know for supporting VMware.

After spending days evaluating products that would report virtual infrastructure capacity to my liking [...]

10 Biggies to Help Managers and Admins Avoid Virtualization Pit-Falls

I wish this information was available 10 years ago when I started working with virtualization, but then again, like many reading this, I thought I was an expert and didn’t need it. Now I see myself as a student because of how fast virtualization is changing.

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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 [...]

Why you need a step by step guide for installing ESX

For more than 10 years I’ve been installing server technology and it’s never been easy to get things operating correctly on the first go-round. Even with the best planning, there are always unexpected things that come up and cause delays. That’s why you need a step-by-step guide for installing VMware ESX Server and Virtual [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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