There are several advantages to enabling hardware virtualization technology in the BIOS of your servers when using vSphere or ESX. These include the ability to use EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility) on your DRS clusters, the use of 64bit OS guests, and using VMware FT (Fault Tolerance).
Turning Intel VT or AMD-V on must be done on [...]
As with any good system, patching is extremely important to keeping your system in safe, running condition. The same holds true for ESX. I’d recommend that anyone who administers an ESX environment sign up to receive critical security bulletins from VMware’s Security Center.
http://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/
In addition, check their site for available patches monthly…
http://support.vmware.com/selfsupport/allpatches.html
Those of you using VMware [...]
This is a collection of tips I’ve collected (from various sources) over time for running Citrix on an ESX virtual machine. I currently use all of these items in my environment.
Use Windows Server 2003 or 2008. Do not use Windows 2000!
Start with one vCPU. You may need a second, depending on your environment.
Specify the correct HAL (single processor or multiprocessor) [...]
Along the way you might run into a P2V (or need to build a new VM) that will host an application which has a license attached to it’s NIC. In order to do this, you generally need to provide the software vendor the MAC address to your VM. That being said, it’s important to ensure [...]
Recently, I had an opportunity to install and configure SRM in a test lab, as part of a project related to a datacenter move. VMware Site Recovery Manager is THE tool to utilize when you’re looking to create an automated solution for disaster recovery. One great thing about SRM is that it can be used [...]
vmware.info has posted a really nice flash simulator for setting up Fault Tolerance in vSphere. This simulation gives you a great idea of how to configure and test the Fault Tolerance feature if you aren’t running vSphere in your lab. I’ll go more into what Fault Tolerance is, and how to use it in future posts. Until then, Check [...]
