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Showing posts from December, 2015

vCenter Converter Standalone for Virtual to Virtual Conversion

Let's say we want to resize the VMDK that is given to a virtual machine. By going into Edit Settings of the VM, we cannot decrease the disk size. Changing the value with Edit Settings of the VM holds good if you are trying to increase the Guest's Disk space. If we want to shrink the VMDK, then it is best we use vCenter Converter Standalone. VMware vCenter Converter Standalone is used if you want to perform a physical to virtual conversion or if you want to convert a Virtual machine to a Virtual machine. Another important feature of this is, if you want to migrate a VM From Oracle VM Manager to vCenter, Converter Standalone can get this job done. In this example here, I am using a 5.5 Update 3 vCenter with a 5.5 Update 3 ESXi host. The converter version used here is 6.0 and the guest OS to be converted is Windows 2008 R2. You need to check the release notes of the converter to make sure that the converter supports the Guest OS of the machine that is about to be converted. Re

Upgrading ESXi Host Via Update Manager

If you have  Update Manager  (VUM), you can upgrade/patch your ESXi host using it. For GUI lovers, VUM seems to be an easy way out.  My ESXi host is Currently 5.5 Build 1331820. This Build corresponds to 5.5 GA. You can find out about VMware Build numbers from this  link .  Step 1: Select the host and click Update Manager tab. Under the baseline section notice that I do not have anything. Click the  Admin View  option. Step 2: Click  ESXi Images  and select  Import ESXi Image . Step 3: Browse to the Datastore and Upload the file and click  Next .  The ESXi image upload will take a quick minute or two.  Once the upload is done, click Next and Provide a  Baseline Name  for this ESXi ISO that was uploaded. Here, the baseline name given is Host_Upgrade. Click  Finish Step 4: Go back to  Compliance View . Right Click the ESXi host and Select  Enter Maintenance Mode . Once the host enters maintenance mode, click  Attach