ESXi Firewall Rules Configuration

As the title is speaking for itself, it is quite clear that today, I am going to discuss various methods to open and close firewall ports on ESXi hosts. It is useless to consider whether configuring firewall rules is harmful or not since every admin once in a while meets the necessity of fine-tuning network to distribute access rights. So, you ought to know all the tools at your disposal one way or another.

Read More

VMware vSphere Content Libraries in a Nutshell: Why use Them (or Why Not)

Some time ago, discussing how cool VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 1 is, I briefly mentioned content libraries. That article was just an overview, so I decided not to go into details, saying that some features need their own posts. In today’s article, I’d like to share my hands-on experience with content libraries and help you to decide whether this feature can make your life any easier.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

Why Snapshots and Checkpoints Alone Aren’t for Backups

Lately, I often face people who prefer using snapshots, wrongly thinking that they can serve as an alternative to a proper backup infrastructure. This comes from a misunderstanding of snapshots’ real functions. So, I’ve decided to sort things out in this post and describe some basic operations you can do with snapshots in VMware and Hyper-V environments.

The term “snapshot” refers to the absolute copy of the particular VM’s state that allows you to roll back to it whenever you want. You can always take a snapshot of the VM, be it running or switched off. Though, if you capture a running VM, its disk activity gets suspended (for a matter of seconds but still…).

So, what’s the main point of taking snapshots?

Read More