How to create a VM on a VMware ESX(i)/vSphere host

This is a very basic tutorial to create a simple virtual machine running on a VMware ESX(i)/vSphere host.

As prerequisites, you need an ESX(i) server and an installed vSphere Client. They must be of the same version (for example, vSphere Client 5.5 won’t work with ESXi 6).

In this post we’ll see how to create a virtual machine for a Windows Server 2012 operating system.
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How to integrate OpenStack with vSphere

OpenStack is a free and open source cloud computing platform. It’s mainly used to build IAAS (infrastructure as a service) solution.

VMware vSphere platform can be used with the OpenStack framework and this video shows how you can integrate it using the vSphere OpenStack Virtual Appliance (VOVA).

To be said, the vSphere OpenStack Virtual Appliance has been created for educational purposes as a proof of concept. It’s not an official product and it doesn’t come with any support. VMware also discourage its use.

SSD / Virtual Flash cache on ESXi (vSphere) 5.5

VMware published an interesting video about SSD / Virtual Flash capabilities of ESXi 5.5 (vSphere).

With Virtual Flash it’s possibile to accelerate read I/O operations caching data on flash storage.

The video provides information about the Virtual Flash technology capabilities and how it works. Furthermore, you can find many links to official sources to configure Virtual Flash on your own.

How to: Hyper-V to VMware ESXi (vSphere) conversion with vCenter Converter

Thanks to the powerful VMware vCenter Converter, it’s pretty easy to convert a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine into an ESXi (vSphere) one.

With Windows Server 2012 and higher, the operation is quite similar to the P2V conversion we explained a few days ago. With Hyper-V running on Windows Server 2008 R2 you can only migrate powered-off Windows VMs.

Let’s see how to perform the conversion.
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How to: install and configure VMware ESXi

We all know VMware ESXi is the leading solution in the market of bare metal hypervisors. So you may be interested in testing its capabilities before deciding to go virtual with your IT infrastructure.

This brief video provided by VMware shows how to install and configure a brand new VMware ESXi 5.1. The same procedure can be used to install the latest ESXi 5.5.

Before watching the video remember that you need certified hardware to use ESXi. You can find a complete list of all the supported devices and systems here.

You can download the latest VMware ESXi ISO from here.

How to: P2V conversion with VMware vCenter Converter

VMware is the leading software company in the virtualization space and it has developed many useful tools to make your job easier in moving your physical infrastructure to a virtual one.

Physical-to-virtual conversions (P2V) can be troublesome without the help of the right tools, the most powerful we know is VMware vCenter Converter, a free software by VMware that you can download here.

vCenter Converter allows you to convert physical machines, VMware Server and Workstation VMs, Hyper-V VMs and drive image backups (created by Windows Backup, Uranium Backup, Acronis and many other software) in working virtual machines for ESX/ESXi. Pretty amazing.
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