Virtualization

Convert thick disk to thin on ESXi free

10/19/11 by | No Comments

Posted in: How To, Virtualization, VMware

Here are the steps to convert a thick VMDK file to thin.  Steps 2-4 are optional, but if you want to shrink it down as small as possible then don’t skip them!

  1. Evaluate how much space you have on the datastore.  You will be creating 2 copies of the .vmdk file before we’re all done, so don’t fill up the datastore and crash all the VMs!
  2. Within the VM run a defrag of the disk. (this is optional but recommended)
  3. Download MS Windows Sysinternals ‘SDelete’ exe to the VM:  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443 
  4. Run ‘sdelete -c’ on the the disk.  This will zero out unused space.
  5. Power offthe VM and make a note of what what datastore(s) the virtual disks are on and what they are named.
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Virtualization Now!

03/15/10 by | No Comments

Posted in: Servers, Virtualization, VMware

Ten Reasons You Should Already Be Using Virtualization For Your Server Environment

According to Intel:

Virtualization technology is possibly the single most important issue in IT and has started a top to bottom overhaul of the computing industry

Virtualization is a relatively new technology, but it is not as new as one might think.  VMware, one of the pioneers of virtualization, has been creating and selling virtualization software for over 10 years now.  All 100 of the Fortune 100 companies are currently using virtualization, specifically VMware’s offerings.  Once the only player, VMware now has serious competition from Microsoft, Citrix, Oracle (who recently acquired Sun Microsystems), RedHat, and Novell.

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Enabling jumbo frames in VMware ESX

11/23/09 by | No Comments

Posted in: Infrastructure, Virtualization, VMware

To get the best performance out of VMware’s iSCSI initiator it’s a good idea to enable jumbo frames on the ESX hosts.  First configure a new vSwitch dedicated to the iSCSI network and if you’re doing this in the GUI delete the default port group that is created.

iSCSI001

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Handling drive corruption on VMware ESX

11/19/09 by | No Comments

Posted in: Virtualization, VMware

Here’s a tip if your ESX host freaks out and you happen to be storing a VMFS partition on the same volume as ESX:

If an “upgrade” install doesn’t fix the problem then do a clean install and on the page that shows how it will cut up the partitions there is a checkbox that says not to touch the existing VMFS partitions on the volume.  Leave that checked and then proceed with the install.

lvm[1]

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