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Monthly Archives: November 2011

Installing ESXi 5.0 in VMware Fusion

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In case you didn't see it, we just posted a new how-to video over on our KBTV channel titled Installing VMware ESXi 5 in VMware Fusion.

With Fusion 4, it is possible to install ESXi 5 as a virtual machine. While not meant for production environments, this is beneficial if you would like to create a mobile testing environment or if you don't have the physical hardware to dedicate and would like to study to become a VMware Certified Professional (VCP).

Once you have downloaded the ESXi ISO image from the download centre, head over to the following KB for the installation steps:  http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2009580

Please note the additional information section of the KB if you plan on running 64 bit guest operating systems in your ESXi virtual machine.

Installing VMware ESXi 5 in VMware Fusion

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A brand new video for all of you Mac OS X fans!

In this video we discuss and demonstrate how to install the VMware vSphere 5 ESXi hypervisor as a guest operating system inside of a virtual machine running on the VMware Fusion 4.x virtualization platform for Mac OS X. That's a mouthful! Read again if confused :)

Be sure to check out VMware Knowledge Base article Installing ESXi 5.0 in VMware Fusion (2009580) for additional information and instructions.

 

Downloading and Installing VMware Fusion 4

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Greetings!

Today we have a new video which I am sure will be of interest to anyone who has a Macbook Pro, iMac or another Apple product with Mac OS X 10.6.7 running on it and who wants to run some Windows applications on it with VMware Fusion 4.

In this video we will discuss and demonstrate the process of downloading and installing VMware Fusion 4.

Before getting started though, you should first ensure that your host system meets the minimum system requirements as defined in the Getting Started with VMware Fusion guide. It's well worth checking if you want to avoid the possible headaches of trying to uninstall a failed install.

For older versions of VMware Fusion, we suggest viewing Downloading and Installing VMware Fusion.

Some VMware Fusion 4.1 Upgrade Tips

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Vmware-fusion-4As you may have heard, Fusion 4.1 has been released. This update contains many bug fixes and some new features too. For a full list of new features, please see the VMware Fusion Blog. Details of fixes included in this release can be found in the Fusion 4.1 release notes.

Now, a few words about some common questions our customers are asking.

1) VMware Fusion 4.1 is a free upgrade for all Fusion 4.x users. When launching Fusion, you will see a popup notification indicating that there is an update available. Click the Upgrade Now button to start the process and it should complete as expected. If you choose to download the Fusion 4.1 .DMG directly and then upgrade, you may experience an error saying “The operation can’t be completed”. This can be avoided by moving the existing Fusion application from your Applications folder into the Trash before attempting to upgrade, as detailed in Upgrading VMware Fusion 4.0 fails with error: The operation can’t be completed (2009730).

2) Once the Fusion update has completed, please ensure you upgrade VMware Tools in your virtual machine. For  complete instructions on upgrading Tools, please refer to Installing VMware Tools in a Fusion virtual machine running Windows (1003417).
 
3) If you have had issues with your Wacom tablet with Fusion 4, you should be particularly interested in this upgrade as this issue has been addressed. If you applied the workaround provided in Wacom tablets do not work properly after upgrading to Fusion 4 (2007106) previously, you will need to remove the workaround when upgrading to Fusion 4.1. This can be done by performing the steps in the KB article and removing the entry previously added to the configuration file. In other words, Fusion 4.1 does not need this work around, so you need to undo it.

If you are interested in trying Fusion 4.1, you can download a free 30 day trial here.

Getting Started with vSphere 5: vCenter Server 5 Basic Installation

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It's been a few weeks since we uploaded our last video but we are happy to announce that we have just uploaded a new vSphere 5 related video for your viewing pleasure.

This video shows you how to install VMware vSphere 5 vCenter Server in its basic configuration. vCenter Server 5 is a part of vSphere 5 product family and is used to offer system administrators a centralized management solution for remotely managing ESX Servers.

Additional documentation for the VMware vSphere 5 product is available at:

 

New Shavlik Content for the Knowledgebase

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579_1274475533_Shav_logo_glow_small_042010Shavlik Technologies, a leading provider of easy-to-use, effective cloud-based IT management solutions for small and medium businesses (SMBs), was recently acquired by VMware. Their products enable customers to manage both physical and virtual machines, deploy software, discover assets, simplify configuration, control power usage and ensure endpoint security.

With this acquisition, we have incorporated the existing Shavlik technical support documents into the VMware Knowledge Base (http://kb.vmware.com) Below you will find a listing of these documents in their new home. We're sure we'll be adding to this list as time progresses and the products mature.

 

 

Top 20 Articles for October 2011

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Here is our Top 20 KB list for October 2011. This list is ranked by the number of times a VMware Support Service Request was resolved by following the steps in a published Knowledge Base article.

  1. Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support (1003212)
  2. Troubleshooting VMware High Availability (HA) (1001596)
  3. Virtual machine does not power on because of locked files (10051)
  4. Collecting diagnostic information for VMware Fusion (1003894)
  5. Best practices for using and troubleshooting VMware Converter (1004588)
  6. Collecting diagnostic information for VMware ESX/ESXi using the vm-support command (1010705)
  7. Purging old data from the database used by vCenter Server (1025914)
  8. Recreating a missing virtual machine disk (VMDK) descriptor file (1002511)
  9. Consolidating snapshots (1007849)
  10. Upgrading to vCenter Server 5.0 best practices (2003866)
  11. Diagnosing an ESX or ESXi host that is Disconnected or Not Responding in vCenter Server (1003409)
  12. Upgrading to ESX 4.1 and vCenter Server 4.1 best practices (1022104)
  13. How to install async drivers on ESX/ESXi 4.x (1032936)
  14. Uninstalling, reinstalling, and upgrading VMware Fusion (1014529)
  15. Best practices for virtual machine snapshots in the VMware environment (1025279)
  16. Committing snapshots when there are no snapshot entries in the snapshot manager (1002310)
  17. Extending partitions in Windows using DiskPart (1007266)
  18. Using esxtop to identify storage performance issues (1008205)
  19. Cloning and converting virtual machine disks with vmkfstools (1028042)
  20. Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi (1033696)

Top 10 Support Issues Today

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Top-10 VMware support issues
We just stumbled across Stu McHugh's Tech Blog this morning and found this gem. It's one of those Top Ten style posts which are always popular, but this one is about support issues, and that is our bread and butter here at the Support Insider.

Stu recently attended VMworld in Copenhagen where he saw Eamon Ryan speak. which covered the top 10 Virtualization Support Issues today. I found this particularly useful as many of them covered upgrading to vSphere 5.0

I won't repeat the list here, to see the Top Ten issues in support right now and how to fix them, head on over to: http://stumchugh.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/top-10-support-issues-at-vmware-and-vmworld