ESX Virtualization

VMware ESXi, vSphere, VMware Backup, Hyper-V... how-to, videos....

Nakivo Backup and Replication - #1 Backup solution for Virtual, physical, cloud, NAS and SaaS

Veeam Backup Free Edition does some good compression – video

By | Last Updated:

Veeam backup Free edition offers great compression ratio. The free version of Veeam product in fact takes only the blocs that are used for the creation of the compressed .vbk file. The whole VM is actually encapsulated (VMDK disks + VMX configuration file) into single .vbk file. The swap file isn’t backed up either. Veeam […]

vCenter Support Assistant 5.1 – free plugin for vCenter

By | Last Updated:

vCenter support assistant 5.1 is available as a free download from VMware website. Not only you can use this product to create and fill support requests, but also to generate and collect logs with direct upload capability. vCenter support assistant 5.1 is available is virtual appliance, which gets deployed from OVF file. This product is […]

What is VMware CTK file format?

By | Last Updated:

A file with extension CTK can be found by using the VMware datastore browser, in the same folder as other VMDK file, where the VM stores all its files (VMDK, VMX, VMSD, NVRAM….). What is VMware CTK file for? The CTK file is used by Changed Block Tracking (CBT). It lists the block changes made since last backup. […]

Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V 3.0 Technical Hands on Guide

By | Last Updated:

I was nicely surprised by the content of this free E-book from Veeam which is a real step-by-step guide. The document is called Understanding Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 and it’s a detailed, illustrated guide for Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V 3.0. For those of you who wants to see step-by-step which allows you to learn about Hyper-V […]

Windows Server 2012 installing and configuring (70-410) training

By | Last Updated:

The new training called Windows Server 2012 Installing and configuring (70-410) Training will allows you to learn through 23 lessons, the installation and configuration. Microsoft Windows Server 2012 brought some good stuff for IT administrators, users and operators. Many of the new features, and roles (hyper-v) has progressed since previous release of Microsoft Server (2008 release). If you’re an […]

What is VMware .vSphere-HA folder for?

By | Last Updated:

If you’re running VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) cluster, you have certainly noticed a folder named “.vSphere-HA” on several of your shared datastores. What is VMware .vSphere-HA folder for? This folder has something to do with HA, you think, but what exactly is stored there? You certainly do not want to delete it, do you? […]

VMware datastore hearbeating – How this functionality works?

By | Last Updated:

When configuring VMware High Availability (HA) cluster, you have the possibility to check as a secondary communication channel  a datastore (or several ones), during the configuration wizard. VMware Datastore Hearbeating provides an additional option for determining if host is in failed state or not. Before vSphere 5.0 era, in vSphere 4.1, if host had a hardware […]

How to Configure VMware High Availability (HA) Cluster

By | Last Updated:

In this article you’ll learn how to configure VMware High Availability (HA) cluster. It’s not in depth article about HA, but gives you enough knowledge and get things running. You could already read my article VMware HA cluster –  how it works with an introductory video from VMware TechPub. VMware HA components changed in vSphere 5 where […]