vSphere

It's time to back it up! Learn how to install and configure VMware's new product, vSphere Data Protection (VDP).

Viva la virtualization! Make the most of it with our top 10 performance vSphere tips by David M. Davis.

VMware unveiled vSphere 5.1 and vCloud 5.1 at VMworld 2012 this morning. David M. Davis provides a technical overview of what's new and noteworthy about the products.

In front of a crowd of close to 20,000 VMworld 2012 attendees, outgoing VMware CEO Paul Maritz introduced incoming CEO Pat Gelsinger, who outlined VMware's new "software-defined datacenter" product strategy and unveiled the new VMware vCloud Suite.

ESXi5 is the latest version of VMware's virtualization hypervisor, which enables multiple virtual machines to run simultaneously on a single physical host, and is free to download and use. In this article Tom Finnis describes the new features in this version and discusses how you might benefit from installing it, whilst covering the basics like hardware requirements and the installation procedure.

The Power Management feature in vSphere 4.1 allows you to choose between five power management policies, helping you reduce energy consumption and increase savings. See how easy it is to configure hardware power management in vSphere and utilize graphing to monitor the CPU of your ESX and ESXi servers.

What does a typical vSphere upgrade entail? What do you need to know before upgrading your vSphere to version 4.1? In this overview you'll learn about preventing downtimes, performing backups, and using the vCenter Agent Pre-Upgrade Check Tool to get ready for upgrading to vSphere 4.1

vSphere based backup solutions such as VMware Data Recovery and Veeam Backup and Replication v5 rely on vSphere's snapshot technology to backup live VMs, which excludes Fault Tolerant VMs as they do not allow snapshots. In this article, Tom Finnis explains how to use custom scripts to work around these restrictions and enable regular scheduled backups of Fault Tolerance protected Virtual Machines.

In this article VMware expert Tom Finnis continues his evaluation of vSphere4 with a look at the new Data Recovery feature. This adds a comprehensive disaster recovery solution to the vSphere suite, providing full and incremental Virtual Machine backups all managed via a vCenter plugin. Read on to learn more....

Tom Finnis explains how to configure the Data Recovery appliance, schedule backups and restore a virtual machine from a backup. Also covered are advanced features such as VSS integrated file level backups and data de-duplication.

Whether you're planning on virtualizing the majority of your existing servers or just using it as part of your infrastructure, vSphere4 represents a major investment for most SME IT managers. This article is aimed at helping you plan for implementing your own vSphere4 Infrastructure, from meeting system requirements to choosing appropriate licensing options, and all options in between.

ESXi 4.0 is the latest version of VMware's industry leading hypervisor; allowing multiple virtual machines to be run on a single physical host. Amazingly its available completely free of charge, so in this step by step guide Tom Finnis will show you how to set up your own ESXi4 server.

VMware has recently replaced their entire Virtual Infrastructure virtualization product suite with vSphere 4. Read on to find out why all IT Admins should be considering a vSphere 4 deployment in their future.

Following on from his previous article on deploying ESxi4, Tom Finnis now shows you how to use the vSphere Client to complete the configuration of your new ESXi4 host server and then deploy your first Virtual Machine.

VMware ESXi 4.0 provides enhanced support for installing in "embedded" mode, so the host server does not need any physical disks installed. For vSphere Infrastructures utilizing SAN storage this allows diskless operation, reducing hardware costs and improving boot times. In this article Tom Finnis demonstrates how to do this with Hewlett Packard's new G6 series servers using their built-in SD card slot.