Книга: Mastering VMware® Infrastructure3

Chapter 6: Creating and Managing Virtual Machines

Chapter 6: Creating and Managing Virtual Machines

While company policy should ultimately drive virtual machine creation, there are best practices that can be followed to ensure performance and ease management. Virtual machines should always start as single virtual CPU systems with a minimum of two hard drives for separating the operating system from the user data.

Install a guest operating system. Installing a guest operating system on a set of virtual machine hardware is similar to an installation on physical hardware and requires the same licensing considerations.

Install the VMware Tools. The VMware Tools provide valuable additions to virtual machines and, although they are not installed by default, they should not be treated as an optional component. The VMware Tools install drivers and features for better memory management, optimized SCSI drivers, and enhanced video and mouse, among other benefits.

Master It Install the VMware Tools into a guest operating system. Solution Use the Inventory menu to select the Install VMware Tools option.

Manage and modify a virtual machine. A running virtual machine is limited in its modifications. Only a hard disk can be added to a running virtual machine, but CD/DVD-ROM drives, floppy drives, and network adapters can all be configured while the virtual machine is in a powered-on state.

Master It Add a new network adapter to a virtual machine.

Solution Turn off the virtual machine, and add the new network adapter through the virtual machine settings.

Master It Add a new hard drive to a virtual machine.

Solution Add the new hard drive through the virtual machine settings.

Create templates and deploy virtual machines. Templates save administrators a great deal of time when deploying new virtual machines. Not only will templates reduce deployment times, but they also help reduce mistakes for new machines.

Master It Prepare VirtualCenter for guest operating system customizations.

Solution Extract the sysprep.exe and setupcl.exe files from the Windows Server 2003 CD to the directory C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataVMware VMware VirtualCentersysprepsvr2003. Or use older versions of sysprep extracted to the appropriate subdirectory on the VirtualCenter server.

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