Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
we'll take a quick look at importing VMs from other environments into your VMware vSphere
environment.
Importing Machines from Other Environments
VMware offers a stand-alone free product called VMware Converter to help customers take
OS installations on physical hardware and migrate them—using a process called a physical-
to-virtual migration, or a P2V migration—into a virtualized environment running vSphere.
Not only does VMware Converter provide P2V functionality, but it also provides virtual-to-
virtual (V2V) functionality. The V2V functionality allows VMs created on other virtualiza-
tion platforms to be imported into VMware vSphere. Administrators can also use VMware
Converter's V2V functionality to export VMs out of VMware vSphere to other virtualization
platforms. This V2V functionality is particularly helpful in moving VMs between VMware's
enterprise-class virtualization platform, VMware vSphere, and VMware's hosted virtualiza-
tion platforms, such as VMware Workstation for Windows or Linux or VMware Fusion for
Mac OS X. Although VMware created all these products, slight differences in the architec-
ture of the products require VMware Converter or a similar tool to move VMs between the
products.
h
e Bottom Line
Clone a VM.
The ability to clone a VM is a powerful feature that dramatically reduces the
amount of time to get a fully functional VM with a guest OS installed and running. vCenter
Server provides the ability to clone VMs and to customize VMs, ensuring that each VM is
unique. You can save the information to customize a VM as a customization specii cation
and then reuse that information over and over again. vCenter Server can even clone running
VMs.
Master It
Where and when can customization specii cations be created in the vSphere
Web Client?
Master It
A fellow administrator comes to you and wants you to help streamline the
process of deploying Solaris x86 VMs in your VMware vSphere environment. What do
you tell him?
Create a VM template.
vCenter Server's templates feature is an excellent complement to the
cloning functionality. With options to clone or convert an existing VM to a template, vCenter
Server makes it easy to create templates. By creating templates, you ensure that your VM
master image doesn't get accidentally changed or modii ed. Then, once a template has been
created, vCenter Server can clone VMs from that template, customizing them in the process
to ensure that each one is unique.
Master It
Of the following tasks, which are appropriate to be performed on a VM run-
ning Windows Server 2008 that will eventually be turned into a template?
a.
Align the guest OS's i le system to a 64 KB boundary.
b.
Join the VM to Active Directory.
c.
Perform some application-specii c coni gurations and tweaks.
d.
Install all patches from the operating system vendor.
