VMWare vSphere Hypervisor - Part 2 : Tools and Snapshots

In Part 1 of this series we looked at the VMWare vSphere Hypervisor product, the reasons for use plus installation and server VM image creation, in Part 2 I'm going to run through VMWare Tools for both platforms with accompanying machine instance snapshot and restore.

To provide maximum control of server VM's inside the ESXi environment you need to install the VMWare Tools for each instance. Doing so enables extra functionality such as dynamic vDisk resizing and controlled shutdown/restart.

VMWare vSphere Hypervisor - Part 1 : Installation and Use

Cloud migration makes sense on many levels however there may be certain server operations your business prefers to keep local for whatever reason, and for multi-box resource intelligence a virtualisation solution delivering consolidated server IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is the way to go. Gone are the days of a single server per function sat sucking up power at 2% of load 24/7/365. Thankfully technology has evolved and today we can operate our systems across substantially more efficient and manageable platforms.

Server platforms need the X-Factor

In this age of rapidly evolving web applications, social networking and internet mobility it's easy to forget (or for some perhaps not even realise) that all this "stuff" has to run on something, the "something" being a server or server platform (or even a "web-farm" if you prefer the more contemporary term). As buildings and builders are to people and society as are servers and infrastructure developers to web content.

I don't doubt the majority of people will have heard of the internet, equally as many of Microsoft, but what of Linux?