There are two goals that SearchVMware.com has for the Virtualization Pro blog: (1) to provide insight and commentary about goings on in the virtualization space, and (2) to provide quick how-to tips that help out the VMware admin in his or her day-to-day operations. Although technology evolves, and some of these posts concern administrative issues that VMware has taken care of in vSphere, these posts still prove popular as they have the highest number of clicks of all of the Virtualization Pro blog posts.
10 – Storage VMotion through the VMware Infrastructure Client
Last year, Andrew Kutz made waves when he released the Storage VMotion graphical user interface (GUI). Here, a fellow ex-blogger discussed his experience with the plug-in and explains how to obtain it for yourself (Note: This plug-in has since been integrated to VMware's ESX platform in vSphere).
9 – Importing the VMware Infrastructure Remote CLI virtual appliance
Learn how to get and install the VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) remote command-line interface (CLI) virtual appliance, necessary for using Storage VMotion in VI3.
8 - Managing VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) from OS X (10.5.1 Leopard)
You can use the VI Perl Toolkit to create a VMware Infrastructure "client" for OS X (command-line interface). Follow the steps in this blog post.
7 - ESX network configuration automation with esxcfg-vswitch
For VI3 environments with multiple VLANs, configuration accuracy is an important step in providing virtual machines with the correct connectivity, but there's a lot to learn.
6 - The VMware VI Client – Why is it Windows only?
As one of our more recent blog posts points out, the VMware Infrastructure Client is still Windows-only. This post, dated back to January 2008, offers some more reasons for why that might be.
5 - Making Microsoft SQL Server boot before vCenter (formerly VirtualCenter) Server
If vCenter boots before Microsoft SQL, or even at the same time as SQL, your system will report two different errors and you'll have to reboot VirtualCenter manually. Make a few quick configuration changes and you won't have to worry about this again.
4 - VMware ESX console commands: esxcfg-info
There are many ESX console commands. This particular one will give you an inventory of an ESX host, including details about the virtual machines on the host.
3 - Choosing a block size when creating VMFS datastores
Selecting the right block size for your Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) datastores initially is important because you can't change it later. This blog post explains how to select the best block size for your VMware ESX servers.
2 - Use the VMware Converter bootable CD for difficult conversions
Some physical servers don't play nicely with VMware Converter. But if you use the VMware Converter bootable CD, you can convert the local system, which may be your only option.
...and the most popular Virtualization Pro blog post to date:
1 - How to allow the root user to log in to VMware ESX with SSH
Even if your firewall allows it, you need to make a slight configuration change for SSH to work with VMware ESX.
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