Category: Windows

Microsoft Windows

VMware vSphere and Time

I’ve been harping about this for years, but a couple of recent customer situations have emphasized the importance of correct time/NTP configuration for all of your vSphere components. In one situation, incorrect time configuration almost completely broke a Nutanix Storage cluster! There was no problem with Nutanix or VMware, but rather networking challenges prevented the
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Spectre, Meltdown and VMware vSphere

Many people are under the incorrect belief that it is hardware-level firmware updates from companies like HPE and Dell that will protect our Virtual Machines from Speculative Execution Vulnerabilities. This is NOT TRUE. As far as your VMs are concerned, the VM BIOS and Hypervisor are the hardware! When VMware gets around to re-releasing vSphere
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Timekeeping on ESXi

Timekeeping on ESXi Hosts is a particularly important, yet often overlooked or misunderstood topic among vSphere Administrators. I recall a recent situation where I created an anti-affinity DRS rule (separate virtual machines) for a customer’s domain controllers. Although ESXi time was correctly configured, the firewall had been recently changed and no longer allowed NTP. As
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Mission Critical Virtual Machines on VMware vSphere

Building Mission Critical VMs on VMware vSphere is pretty simple. There are just a few commonly acknowledged Best Practices with which to adhere, regardless of whether you are installing Windows or Linux: Use Paravirtualized drivers wherever possible Remove unnecessary hardware from the VM (settings) Disable unnecessary or unused devices in BIOS Assign no more resources
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