RDM disks for VMware vSphere VMs: how & why to create them

Sometimes, you need your VMs to access a LUN directly over iSCSI. Direct access comes in handy when you, let’s say, run SAN/NAS-aware applications on vSphere VMs, or if you’re going to deploy some hardware-specific SCSI commands. Also, with direct access, physical-to-virtual conversion becomes possible without migrating a massive LUN to VMDK. Whatever. To enable your VMs to talk directly to LUN, you need a raw device mapping file. Recently, I created vSphere VMs with such disks. Well, apparently, this case is not unique, so I decided to share my experience in today’s article.

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Installing vSphere 6.5 U2 update without messing things up

One day, any virtual infrastructure needs to be updated. That may be just due to admin’s wish to keep up with modern trends or the need for some cool features that are brought to life with the latest updates. And, speaking of updates, VMware has recently released their vSphere 6.5 U2.So, being a VMware fan, I decided to update my vSphere 6.5 and describe the entire update process from its planning through the installation itself.

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How to clone VMs if VMware vCenter is unavailable

There are various tricks and hints we all use to make our daily system administration routines easier. One of them is virtual machine cloning provided by VMware vCenter Server. Great and simple thing allowing you to deploy many identical virtual machines to a group – no need to repeat the same process all over again. This is usually done in vCenter but there are several other ways you can go if it becomes unavailable.

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PowerCLI: a fast and easy way to set up virtual networks in VMware ESXi 6.5

Recently, I decided to automate some boring routine procedures related to setting up virtual networks in ESXi 6.5. That’s right, I’m talking about PowerCLI. This command-line tools allows automating all aspects of vSphere management, including network, storage, VM and so on and so forth. Sure, I had to dig into the details of orchestrating ESXi with PowerCLI. Yep, it took me some time but at the end of the day, the knowledge and experience I acquired paid back! Apparently, this case is not unique, so I decided to share my experience in today’s scribbling.

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