Tips

Tips

• Which high-availability strategy is best for your VMs?

  Did you know that a software bug could crash a VM and even cripple a VM platform? Learn HA strategies that keep workloads running when trouble threatens a mission-critical VM.  Continue Reading

• Hypervisor pricing and licensing comparison guide

  When choosing the best hypervisor, a pricing and licensing comparison is a must. VMware, Microsoft and Citrix all offer different prices and hypervisor licensing policies.  Continue Reading

• Three methods to make virtual machines highly available

  Are you afraid that your server might fail and lose crucial data? Learn key methods to protect your production workloads and ensure that they're always available.  Continue Reading

• Understanding Hyper-V's failover settings in Failover Cluster Management

  Virtual machines that are colocated onto hosts can pose compliance risks. There are workarounds, including the use of Failover Cluster Management, to secure Hyper-V environments.  Continue Reading

• The top four Hyper-V virtualization problems that plague admins

  While Microsoft's Hyper-V R2 has made great strides, some problems still plague admins. Here are four issues with Hyper-V that continue to plague virtualization administrators.  Continue Reading

• Four less-known mistakes that can kill Hyper-environments

  With each Hyper-V release, virtualization best practices evolve. Here are four lesser-known mistakes that can kill virtual machine performance in Hyper-V environments.  Continue Reading

• Citrix XenServer and Essentials licensing, pricing explained

  Citrix Systems prices, licenses and supports XenServer differently from VMware's pricing method for vSphere and Microsoft's for Hyper-V.  Continue Reading

• Fixed vs. dynamic disks for Hyper-V virtual machines

  As you provision new virtual machines in Hyper-V, you face a key choice: whether to select fixed-size or dynamically expanding disks. This tip explains each disk type's tradeoffs.  Continue Reading

• Why you should consolidate your test and development environment

  See how organizations use virtualization to build laboratories in order to save costs, maintain consistency and reduce their carbon footprint!  Continue Reading

• Building high-availability clusters with Xen virtual machines

  High-availability clusters can save your virtualized environment from downtime. Here's how to set up Xen virtual machines in a high-availability cluster.  Continue Reading

• Understanding the Virtual Machine Disk file format

  Files in the Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) file format, a central part of VMware's virtual environment, can act as complete and independent virtual machines.  Continue Reading

• Memory overcommit lets virtual machines use more memory

  In theory, memory overcommit may seem like a dangerous proposition, but if you know how to properly assess resource demands, this feature is an asset to your virtual machines.  Continue Reading

• How to improve security in Hyper-V virtual networks

  Virtual switches in Microsoft's Hyper-V and other virtualization platforms don't have all the capabilities of physical switches, but there are ways to work around this hidden danger to improve network security.  Continue Reading

• Top 5 benefits of server virtualization technology

  An expert outlines the benefits of server virtualization technology, including improved costs, security, efficiency and more.  Continue Reading

• Troubleshooting virtual server performance problems

  One way to address performance issues is resource throttling. Another option is to use performance tests to identify elevated resource usage. Learn to utilize these tips and more.  Continue Reading

• Right-sizing VM allocation in the enterprise

  Do you know the secret to successful server consolidation? Learn the secret as well as how to determine and track virtual machine needs in this tip.  Continue Reading

• Microsoft Hyper-V R2 pricing, licensing explained

  To manage Microsoft's Hyper-V, users need to buy System Center and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). Here we are Hyper-V licensing and pricing options.  Continue Reading

• Host and guest virtual machine: Definitions

  We explain the two components of a virtual machine -- the host and the guest -- in this installment of virtualization explained series.  Continue Reading

• How AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) technology works

  Find out how AMD-V technology has changed the way physical processors and guest virtual machines communicate and learn how Rapid Virtualization Indexing enhances performance.  Continue Reading

• How server consolidation can benefit your data center

  The benefits of server consolidation include greater computing efficiency, lower power and cooling costs, and the flexibility to migrate workloads between physical servers.  Continue Reading

• Using virtual servers for disaster recovery: The pros and cons

  Want to learn how to have a safe business continuity platform? This article teaches you how to better understand disaster recovery procedures using a virtualization server.  Continue Reading

• How storage virtualization works

  Here we explain how storage virtualization works, how it can provide benefits in terms by reducing stroage space and improving management and outline some offerings in the storage virtualization market.  Continue Reading

• The five best free tools for Microsoft Hyper-V management

  Microsoft's Hyper-V makes virtualization easier for IT organizations of all sizes, but these free tools can improve virtual machine management.  Continue Reading

• Virtualization don'ts: Neglecting VM resource allocation

  You can't truly benefit from virtualization if you neglect the process of virtual machine resource allocation. Here are the key steps for successful strategy.  Continue Reading

• Configuring cluster failover settings for Hyper-V virtual machines

  The Failover Cluster Management console can be confusing, but its benefits are worth some effort. The console can ensure that a highly available Hyper-V virtual machine fails over to the proper host.  Continue Reading

• Hidden dangers of Hyper-V: Dormant virtual machines

  Virtualization can bring power to the data center, but beware proliferating virtual machines and the security risks they pose to your network.  Continue Reading

• Four mistakes that can kill virtual machine performance

  Screensavers, managing from the console, real-time security scans and certain Windows Server power options can all undermine virtual machine performance. Here's how to avoid VM performance killers.  Continue Reading

• How to create virtual machines using OpenVZ

  Learn how to create and manage virtual machines using OpenVZ, an open source, container-based alternative to hypervisor-based virtualization that runs on Linux.  Continue Reading

• How to make Hyper-V server virtualization licensing work for you

  The different options for Microsoft Hyper-V licensing and some real-world examples can demonstrate the savings needed to gain management approval of virtualization.  Continue Reading

• Gathering workload data essential to P2V migration

  Before you can migrate workloads from physical to virtual servers, you need to know which workloads are candidates for virtualization. These virtual machine monitoring tools help monitor workloads' resource use and identify the best P2V candidates.  Continue Reading

• Six steps for migrating Xen virtual machines to KVM

  There are no tools to simply switch a Linux virtualization environment from the Xen hypervisor to a KVM virtual machine, but these six steps for virtual machine migration make it easier.  Continue Reading

• Using Diskshadow for backing up Hyper-V workloads

  For virtual machine backups, you can save on Windows Server 2008 costs with Diskshadow, an alternative to Hyper-V's Volume Shadow Copy Service.  Continue Reading

• Sizing the right hardware for high-availability Hyper-V clusters

  Because of RAM limits, Hyper-V clusters need multiple hosts as well as powerful servers so that virtualized environments don't waste space and can fail over if a host goes down.  Continue Reading

• Performing Windows P2V conversion with PlateSpin Migrate

  This step-by-step lesson explains how to use PlateSpin Migrate to perform physical-to-virtual conversion for Windows servers and simplify a sometimes-complex process.  Continue Reading

• What are Hyper-V's integration components?

  Emulated and synthetic device drivers in Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization can improve virtual machine performance. Emulated device drivers are used during installation, but synthetic devices can create faster virtual machine performance.  Continue Reading

• Virtualization performance and container-based virtualization

  In environments without multiple operating systems, container-based virtualization can improve performance over hypervisor-based virtualization.  Continue Reading

• How Hyper-V snapshots work

  Point-in-time snapshots of a virtual machine in Hyper-V can save administrators time, but they aren't backups, and you need to monitor disk usage and coordinate merges.  Continue Reading

• How to Implement Cluster Shared Volumes in Hyper-V R2

  Microsoft has added Cluster Shared Volumes to its Hyper-V R2 virtualization software, allowing multiple virtual machines to be stored on a single logical unit number.  Continue Reading

• How to use PowerShell or VBScript scripting with Hyper-V

  Microsoft's Hyper-V includes scripting options to manage virtualization environments. See examples of how to automate and configure in PowerShell or VBScript.  Continue Reading

• Virtualization deployment: The assessment and planning phases

  An expert explains the key phases of virtualization deployment projects and outlines the core tasks in the assessment and planning stages.  Continue Reading

• Virtual systems management efficiency: Improving admin-to-VM ratios

  Increasing administrator-to-virtual machine ratios can boost IT productivity and systems management efficiency and reduce IT costs. An expert explains how to use virtual systems management tools to improve this metric.  Continue Reading

• Using Virtual Machine Manager for rapid Hyper-V deployment

  Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager in Hyper-V allows to you create a VM template easily and rapidly deploy virtual machines in your environment.  Continue Reading

• Selecting CPU, processors and memory for virtualized environments

  There are several aspects to choosing CPU and memory for your virtual environment. In the selection process, processor speed, the number of cores needed and the type of DIMMs you use are all critical considerations. An expert outlines what you ...  Continue Reading

• Blades vs. rack servers: Basic purchasing principles still apply

  Both blade servers and rack-mount servers offer advantages in a virtual environment. But whichever host hardware you choose, remember the basic principles of hardware purchasing.  Continue Reading

• New features in Microsoft's SCVMM R2 improve Hyper-V management

  Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 offers several features to improve Hyper-V management, such as Live Migration support, improved LUN management and network optimization.  Continue Reading

• Improving VM density ratios

  Many enterprises haven't maximized their virtual machine density per physical server, which often means poor VM density ratios and higher operating costs. An expert explains how virtual systems management tools such as Microsoft's Virtual Machine ...  Continue Reading

• Application virtualization with VMware ThinApp

  VMware's ThinApp technology can increase application compatibility in Windows environments. An expert explains the virtues of application virtualization and explains how to configure a virtual application with ThinApp.  Continue Reading

• Using Cluster Shared Volumes to improve virtual host resource use

  Cluster Shared Volumes, an update to Windows Failover Clustering, improves virtual host resource utilization by enabling admins to store multiple virtual machines (VMs) on one LUN without failing over each VM.  Continue Reading

• Configuring Hyper-V virtual networks

  Configuring virtual networks in Hyper-V can be achieved using virtual local area network (VLAN) trunks.  Continue Reading

• Establishing iSCSI connections in Hyper-V

  Establishing iSCSI connections in Hyper-V can be difficult without the iscsicli.exe command line tool. An expert outlines the method and the additional commands you need.  Continue Reading

• Mounting VHD files in Hyper-V environments

  Accessing files from virtual machines that aren't powered on can be time-consuming. But you can use the PowerShell script or the VHDMount tool in Microsoft Virtual Server to mount VHD files on your desktop. An expert explains these ...  Continue Reading

• Disaster recovery strategies for Hyper-V

  If you don't know about Hyper-V's disaster recovery technologies, you should. An expert explains how to develop a Hyper-V business continuity strategy.  Continue Reading

• Using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool in Hyper-V environments

  The Microsoft Assessment and Planning toolkit can be used for Hyper-V consolidation planning and migrations. Learn how to install and use MAP  Continue Reading

• Virtual desktop infrastructure with Sun Ray 2 devices

  The Sun Ray 2 series of physical client devices allows you to manage bandwidth, support multimedia and gives you options for peripheral connectivity in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) at a competitive price. An expert looks at the ...  Continue Reading

• Capacity planning for virtual environments

  Effective virtual environment capacity planning requires taking inventory of applications, allocating computing power and organizing disaster recovery resources. An expert outlines capacity planning considerations in this tip.  Continue Reading

• Hyper-V and PerfMon: Even more useful counters

  In addition to measuring processing power, Hyper-V's PerfMon counters can also monitor root partitions, memory use and virtual machine networking to help enhance performance management in your virtual environment. An expert highlights the features ...  Continue Reading

• Hyper-V and PerfMon: Not your usual processor counters

  If you want to monitor virtual machine performance on a Hyper-V platform, you'll need to learn about the differences of Hyper-V's PerfMon counters. An expert explains their distinguishing features in this tip.  Continue Reading

• Internal vs. external guest virtual machine storage

  What's the best option for guest virtual machine storage: internal VM storage with Virtual Machine Disk Formats, or VMDKs, or external VM storage with iSCSI? An expert weighs the pros and cons of both methods.  Continue Reading

• Securing virtual environments: Three considerations

  If you approach virtual environment security by viewing elements such as a hypervisor and management applications in isolation, you invite breaches and risk. This tip outlines three common risks to virtual environments and how to prevent them.  Continue Reading

• Mounting Xen virtual machines with image-based storage back ends

  By mounting Xen virtual machine disks located in image files, you have the ability to reactivate a failing VMwith greater ease. In this tip, an expert will explain how to do this for both Windows and Linux-based virtual host operating systems.  Continue Reading

• Virtual machine and VMware snapshot guide

  Taking snapshots of virtualized environments can minimize botched virtual machine (VM) administration, including system crashes and errors. Learn the basics about snapshots and VMware snapshot management in this guide.  Continue Reading

• Mounting Xen virtual machine storage on physical hosts

  If a Xen virtual machine fails to start up, having its storage back end-mounted to your Xen server physical host is beneficial. An expert explains how to do so if you use a device as your storage back end.  Continue Reading

• Virtual machine backup with Hyper-V

  Regardless of which virtualization platform you use, virtual machine backup poses challenges, such as how to retrieve individual files. An expert explains how to back up VMs using Microsoft's Hyper-V.  Continue Reading

• Windows P2V conversions with PlateSpin PowerConvert

  PlateSpin's PowerConvert program allows you to convert physical machines to virtual ones across different platforms. In this tip, an expert explains how to convert a Windows Server 2003 physical machine to a XenServer virtual one.  Continue Reading

• HyperV can generate MAC Address Conflicts

  HyperV has an algorithm to generate new MAC addresses per host, but it doesn’t check to see if this MAC address is unique to two HyperVs on the same subnet!  Continue Reading

• Server repurposing: Achieving more efficient data center virtualization

  Effective virtual architecture enables you to make rapid changes to servers, software and storage. This tip explains why server repurposing increases virtualization's efficiency.  Continue Reading

• Managing Hyper-V's security permissions

  While the default settings for Hyper-V's security permissions can work well in smaller settings, you may need to adjust these settings in larger environments. This tip outlines setting configuration with Hyper-V's not-so-intuitive Authorization ...  Continue Reading

• How to install an open source iSCSI SAN server inside Microsoft Hyper-V

  Buying a real iSCSI storage area network for testing or home use is costly, but installing an open source iSCSI SAN such as Openfiler in a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine is an affordable alternative. Openfiler offers numerous useful storage, ...  Continue Reading

• Citrix XenServer tip: Doing a physical-to-virtual conversion

  Follow these steps to use Citrix XenServer's physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion module, and learn when using third-party P2V tools would be a be better option. XenServer's module only works with certain operating system, such as Red Hat Enterprise...  Continue Reading

• Installing KVM virtual machines

  Creating Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machines is easy. This tip outlines the simple steps to virtualizing the Linux way and shows how to install Windows and Ubuntu as guest OSes.  Continue Reading

• Opting for Hyper-V in laptop-based virtualization

  Running a Hyper-V virtual machine off a laptop is convenient but not without some drawbacks, such as the need for high-end hardware and compromised performance.  Continue Reading

• Monitor VMware ESX with third-party applications

  Performance monitoring tools, including those from Hyperic and Microsoft, provide better analysis than VMware's standard tool set. This guide reviews the virtualization performance management offerings that are compatible with ESX and with other ...  Continue Reading

• Optimizing Hyper-V performance: Advanced fine-tuning

  Hyper-V integration services and Microsoft's new synthetic network drivers require administrators to be proactive with hardware and network settings. In this tip, we outline how to fine-tune these settings to improve network and multicore processor ...  Continue Reading

• Creating an OS virtualization architecture

  OS virtualization's advantages, when hosted atop hypervisor-based architectures, fit into many different virtualization strategies. Expert Greg Shields discusses how hosted desktops, test/dev environments and servers can benefit.  Continue Reading

• OS virtualization: Virtualizing without the hypervisor

  Get faster and smaller, hypervisor-free virtual machines with container-based operating system virtualization. Expert Greg Shields shows how to get greater VM performance in less physical space in this tip.  Continue Reading

• Virtualizing VoIP

  As IP PBX vendors embrace nonproprietary platforms, the time is right for virtualizing call managers. And maximizing underutilized VoIP/IPT servers is just one way to virtualize communications, an expert explains.  Continue Reading

• Optimizing virtual hard disk performance in Hyper-V

  To improve virtual hard disk (VHD) performance, allocate virtual machines more efficiently, better distribute VHD I/O load and perform standard disk operations regularly.  Continue Reading

• Open Virtual Machine Format to benefit users

  Virtualization vendors plan to adopt the Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) to facilitate virtual appliance deployment. An expert discusses how VMware users can benefit from the new format.  Continue Reading

• Taking Snapshots with Hyper-V

  Point-in-time archives are a snap in Hyper-V with the new snapshot tool. Learn how to use the easy-to-use feature in the Management Console to create hierarchies of VM configuration changes.  Continue Reading

• Leveraging legacy IT with virtualization

  Migrating legacy applications to virtual machines maximizes the benefits of next-generation hardware. Learn how to retain older programs and preserve IT investments by following these examples of native and cross-platform virtualization migration.  Continue Reading

• Understanding Hyper-V partitions and device drivers

  With Hyper-V's device driver options, you can get greater virtual machine performance without sacrificing OS compatibility. Learn about features that make Microsoft's platform more manageable.  Continue Reading

• Creating additional Xen virtual network bridges

  Configuring additional bridges between virtual machines and physical networks in Xen increases virtual network performance. An expert gives the necessary commands and scripts in this tip.  Continue Reading

• Benefiting from I/O virtualization

  A new form of virtualization, I/O virtualization, can provide greater flexibility and utilization as well as faster provisioning. Expert Scott Lowe explains the potential gains to be made by deploying I/O virtualization on a network.  Continue Reading

• Creating snapshots in Xen with Linux commands

  Xen doesn't support snapshots, but you can use Linux commands to create virtual machine portraits. This tip offers two snapshot methods.  Continue Reading

• Managing virtual machines with Microsoft System Center

  Microsoft System Center is a strong asset in Microsoft's growing family of virtualization products that automates many administration tasks. But while the Windows Server management tool streamlines VM management, there is still room for improvement ...  Continue Reading

• Installing Citrix XenServer for free

  In this tip, site expert Sander van Vugt explains how to install the free version of Citrix XenServer in your virtual environment.  Continue Reading

• Five pitfalls of virtualization, and how to avoid them

  This free Info-Tech report highlights five common virtualization implementation challenges and how they can be mitigated by focusing on application provisioning and capacity planning.  Continue Reading

• How virtualization impacts IT staff, security and change management

  Virtualization breeds three new challenges: reorganizing IT department taskforces, recognizing new security vulnerabilities, and working with a complex change management process.  Continue Reading

• VMware Converter: Version differences, hot and cold cloning

  VMware Converter is VMware's physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion tool. Learn about version differences, hot and cold cloning, and which servers to stay away from with this tool.  Continue Reading

• Network-bridge and ifconfig: Configuring Xen networks on Linux

  Learn how to use network-bridge and ifconfig commands with Xen on SUSE Linux Enterprise to control the network bridge and see all available interfaces on your network.  Continue Reading

• Disaster recovery preparedness in virtual environments

  A virtual environment introduces different requirements for disaster recovery preparedness, including backing up hypervisor configuration settings and creating virtual machine snapshots.  Continue Reading

• Weighing hosted, bare-metal, OS and hybrid server virtualization

  This tip helps you identify the pros and cons of the various server virtualization approaches: hosted, bare-metal, operating system and hybrid.  Continue Reading

• Achieving high availability in a virtualized environment

  High availability (HA) in virtual environments now requires an arsenal of tools, including spare hardware provisioning and system health checks for rapid fault detection.  Continue Reading

• XenExpress tutorial: Installing a Windows XP virtual machine

  Learn how to create a Windows virtual machine using XenExpress and load the Windows operating system into it.  Continue Reading

• Memory and CPU allocation in Xen environments: Optimizing performance

  Learn how to change memory and CPU allocations for optimal Xen virtual machine performance. Also learn how to modify the priority of a virtual machine on a physical CPU.  Continue Reading

• Physical-to-virtual migration best practices

  Ensure your physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration is successful and occurs without incident with this tip from Rick Vanover.  Continue Reading

• Inside Microsoft's Hyper-V Windows 2008 virtualization architecture (formerly Viridian)

  Anil Desai describes the technical architecture of Microsoft's upcoming Hyper-V (formerly Viridian) and explains what it means for IT organizations.  Continue Reading

• Managing PCI devices in virtual machines

  In this article, Sander van Vugt explains the management options that exist with regard to PCI devices and virtual machines.  Continue Reading

• VDI on VMware infrastructures: The role of the connection broker

  In this tip, Scott Lowe explores the connection broker and some of the functionality that brokers provide in a VDI deployment.  Continue Reading

• Virtual machine installation: Managing Xen block devices

  In this tip, Sander van Vugt explains three ways to manage a disk device for Xen.  Continue Reading