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As you know, VMware ESX Server and the Virtual Infrastructure Client does have some basic performance monitoring tools. While these built-in tools may look “fancy”, once you start using them in a production environment, you will quickly find that you need more. I caution you that you want to make sure that you find a…

The VMware Infrastructure package consists of 3 applications – VMware ESX, Virtual Center, and VMware Consolidated Backup. In this article, we’ll learn the features of VMware’s Virtual Center (VC) and what it can do for you. Features of VMware Virtual Center For those who aren’t took familiar with VC, let’s start off by hitting the…

Just like every other password, it is inevitable that, eventually, you will loose or forget the root password to one of your VMware ESX Server systems. So how do you reset your VMware ESX Server root password? Let’s find out… 1. Shutdown and Reboot your VMware ESX Server If you don’t know the VMware ESX…

One of the most important features of VMware ESX Server / Virtual Infrastructure is the ability to configure Cluster Pools and Resource Pools. How can these pools help you and what is the difference between them? Let’s find out. What are VMware ESX Server Cluster Pools? A cluster is defined as “a group of tightly…

You are probably already familiar with what VMware ESX Server is, how it is revolutionary, and how virtualization is changing server infrastructure forever. Perhaps you are already an ESX Server user, perhaps not. Either way, the latest version of ESX Server, 3i (could go even farther than ESX Server 3, in changing the face of…

Just released is the latest enterprise virtualization platform from VMware – ESX Server 3.5. However, is there really anything useful in this release? Is it even deserving of a “point 5” release name or should it have just been ESX Server 3.0.3? Let’s find out… Where are the new features in VMware ESX Server 3.5?…

While it is normal to login as “administrator” when you are testing VMware ESX Virtual Center and normal to login as root while you are testing VMware ESX Server, as soon as your Virtual Infrastructure moves into production, you will want system administrators login as themselves. In fact, best practices dictate this. Besides providing accountability,…

In our previous article, “What you need to know about VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB)“, we provided an overview of how VCB can help you. In this article, we will explore the command line utilities provided with VCB. There is no GUI interface for VCB so these tools are THE tools that you get with VCB….

As a system administrator with growing demand on your servers you will eventually run into a capacity bottleneck in your CPU, RAM, Disk, or network. These performance issues can be difficult to identify and troubleshoot without a quality tool. For typical Windows servers, performance management tools can often be difficult to install, configure, and obtain…

In our article called VMware Disk Files Explained, we talked about the different VMware files on disk. In particular, we talked about the important VMware VMX configuration file. In this article, we’ll go into more details on this critical VMX file. What are VMX Files? In our previous article, VMware Disk Files Explained, we covered…

Whether you would like to use virtualization on your desktop PC or on a server farm, you must choose a virtualization product. The two most popular virtualization products are EMC’s VMware and Microsoft’s Virtual PC/Server. So how do you choose the right product for your needs? Let’s find out… Understanding Your Needs No matter what…

In our recent article about downloading Microsoft Exchange 2007 VHD files, we learned how Microsoft has recently offered demo versions of their newest Enterprise applications (Exchange, Windows Server 2003 R2, and others), in the VHD format. The VHD format works in Microsoft Virtual Server and can be easily imported into VMWare. While this is a…