VM-Aware

Server, Storage & Application Virtualisation!

One of the great new bits of functionality in ESX 3.5 Update is the ability to hot extend non-boot virtual disks without shutting down the VM.
I decided to give it a go with a Windows 2003 Standard VM and thought I”d provide a How To for anyone that might need/want it.
You can download the pdf [...]

VMware have recently announced an update to 3.5 & ESXi. Normally VMware slip a few cool features into interim releases, but nothing as major as the inclusions in Update 2. Here’s an overview of some of the major functionality additions.

VSS quiescing support – Windows 2003 VMs now have application & file system level [...]

The much vaunted, but still experimental Virtual Machine level High Availability gets discussed in this post by Eric Siebert over at TechTarget.
It goes through all the advanced settings that need to be enabled and some default settings for all the tweaks as well. Below is an overview of all the settings that need to [...]

Nick Triantos has posted another brilliant post over at his Storage Nuts & Bolts blog about VMware Site Recovery Manager and the adapter that NetApp have created to plug into SRM.
The article talks about what is supported in the SRA (Site Recovery Adapter) including:

SnapMirror integration with SRM
Support for Sync, Async & Semi Sync
Dissimilar H/W configuration [...]

A great list over at VMwareLand has been compiled of lots of top tens relating to VMware and Virtualisation.
They include:
Top 10 free tools that should be in every VMware administrator’s toolkit
Top 10 things you must read when trying to sell VMware as a solution to managementTop 10 things you must read about VirtualCenterTop 10 things [...]

ICT Freak have posted about how to use a connection to the VirtualCenter SQL Server database from Excel to display useful VMotion information.
Check out article here.