19 June 2011 ~ 4 Comments

VMware VMkernel SWAP File Best Practice

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 for guest SWAP [...]

Continue Reading

19 June 2011 ~ 5 Comments

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 [...]

Continue Reading

19 June 2011 ~ 0 Comments

Three Ways for Extending a VM’s Disk

Most new virtual servers are provisioned from templates that have 12 to 20 GB “C” disk so what do you do when you run out of space?  Here are three methods which might work for you to increase the size of your virtual server’s disk.  Use VMconverter from VMware to clone the VM and change [...]

Continue Reading

19 June 2011 ~ 2 Comments

VMware P2V Checklist for Servers

In November I visited the VMware users group for the Phoenix area and one of the big topics was P2V. Not enough can be said about all the challenges there are to successfully convert physical servers to virtual servers (P2V), especially when your data center has hundreds of servers with various configurations and operating systems. Sometimes [...]

Continue Reading