Tips Archives - ESX Virtualization

XorMon 2.4.0 released – What’s New and Why You Should Care

Vladan SEGET — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 06:03:22 +0000

Monitoring of heterogeneous environments has always been difficult – or at least it was before tools like XorMon came along. If you manage VMware, Nutanix, IBM Power, storage from several vendors, Oracle databases, LAN/SAN, backups and more, you know the pain of jumping between five different consoles. XorMon from Xorux solves that by putting everything […]

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ZSvirt.io – Open-Source KVM Virtualization That Actually Feels Enterprise (and Deploys in Minutes)

Vladan SEGET — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:41:01 +0000

Another VMware alternative dropped into the open-source world in August 2026, and this one is worth a serious look. In fact, ZSvirt (zsvirt.io / GitHub: ZSvirt/zsvirt) is the community edition of ZStack’s production-hardened ZSphere engine, released under GPL-3.0 with no limits on hosts, VMs, or features for production use. It manages KVM-based infrastructure through a […]

Read the full post ZSvirt.io – Open-Source KVM Virtualization That Actually Feels Enterprise (and Deploys in Minutes) at ESX Virtualization.

Tiny11 Builder WinUI 0.1.1 is out – and it finally has a proper modern UI

Vladan SEGET — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 12:01:26 +0000

Hey folks, Vladan here from ESX Virtualization. If you’ve been reading the blog for a while you already know I’m always on the lookout for ways to keep Windows VMs small, in the lab. Back in November 2023 I wrote about the original Tiny11 project and how useful a stripped-down Windows 11 can be when […]

Read the full post Tiny11 Builder WinUI 0.1.1 is out – and it finally has a proper modern UI at ESX Virtualization.

TMOG Task Manager – The Original Creator of Windows Task Manager Is Back With Something Better

Vladan SEGET — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 14:22:44 +0000

Today's freebie is from a guy who 30 years ago designed the original Windows Task manager. If you’ve ever hit Ctrl+Shift+Esc on a Windows box and stared at the Task Manager wondering what’s eating your CPU or RAM, you’ve used Dave Plummer’s work. The same guy who wrote the original Windows Task Manager back in […]

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Free Online EDB to PST Converter: Extract Mailbox Data Without Exchange Server

Vladan SEGET — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:16:42 +0000

If you have managed on-premises Exchange environments for any length of time, you have almost certainly run into situations where you need mailbox data out of an EDB file but the original Exchange server is no longer available, the database is offline, or native PowerShell cmdlets such as New-MailboxExportRequest simply fail. In such situations where […]

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StarWind Virtual HCI Appliance Free: Turn Your Servers into a Full HCI Cluster Without Spending a Cent

Vladan SEGET — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:36:25 +0000

If you’ve been following my blog for a while (yes, we’re talking back to the early ESXi days), you know I love practical, cost-effective solutions that actually work in the real world — especially for SMBs, ROBO sites, edge locations, or anyone tired of expensive proprietary HCI stacks. Today we’re diving into something that fits […]

Read the full post StarWind Virtual HCI Appliance Free: Turn Your Servers into a Full HCI Cluster Without Spending a Cent at ESX Virtualization.

How to update your ESXi 7.x or 8.x to the latest ESXi 8.0U3k via command line

Vladan SEGET — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:42:16 +0000

For those enthousiasts which are still running ESXi in their labs, or for SMBs which needs to upgrade their VMware vSphere Infrastructure, this is this quick guide which allows you to upgrade couple of ESXi hosts easily enough via a “depot.zip” file. The VMware-ESXi-8.0U3k-25595708-depot.zip is the latest file which has all cumulative patches inside, is […]

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Turning Your NAS into a Powerful, Budget-Friendly Backup Appliance with NAKIVO

Vladan SEGET — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 08:46:28 +0000

Hey everyone, Vladan here from ESX Virtualization. Over the years, I've tested and written about dozens of backup solutions for VMware, Hyper-V, and mixed environments, always keeping an eye on what actually works for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) without breaking the bank. Today, we're diving into a practical, cost-effective approach that's gained serious traction: […]

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Winslopr: The No-Nonsense Windows Slop Remover for Windows 11 Home Users and IT Admins Alike

Vladan SEGET — Tue, 05 May 2026 07:35:16 +0000

If you've been running Windows 11 for a while, you know the feeling. The OS itself is solid under the hood—great performance, modern UI elements, solid security foundations—but Microsoft keeps layering on stuff you didn't ask for. Telemetry, aggressive suggestions, Copilot (whether you want it or not), ads in the Start menu, OneDrive nagging, background […]

Read the full post Winslopr: The No-Nonsense Windows Slop Remover for Windows 11 Home Users and IT Admins Alike at ESX Virtualization.

XorMon v2.2 Is Out – What’s New and Why You Should Upgrade

Vladan SEGET — Mon, 04 May 2026 12:00:23 +0000

If you're managing a mixed IT environment – and let's be honest, who isn't these days – you know the pain of juggling five different monitoring tools at once. One for VMware, one for storage, one for backup, one for databases… it gets messy fast. That's exactly why I keep coming back to XorMon. It's […]

Read the full post XorMon v2.2 Is Out – What’s New and Why You Should Upgrade at ESX Virtualization.