10 Tips to Get Ready for vSphere

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10 Tips to Get Ready for VMware vSphere™

Tip #1

Check your VMware Account Online

Log in at http://www.vmware.com/support/licensing.html to manage your licenses, view serial numbers or register serial numbers. Once logged in, make sure all of your licenses are present. There is Simplified License Management in vSphere 4, simple license keys instead of FlexLM license files, one license key per vSphere edition with one license key for many hosts. There is no more licensing server to manage or monitor. All of your license inventory and usage is monitored through vCenter. These licenses are only visible to privileged users.

a.) Central location to keep track of license keys, entitlements, and their change history (for compliance management) and retrieve lost license keys

b.) Obtain vSphere 4 license keys which will be automatically fulfilled to customers with active subscriptions on their VI3 licenses

c.) Downgrade purchased vSphere 4 licenses to VI3 license files

d.) Divide purchased license quantities into several smaller license keys (ie. in case the purchased quantity is for multiple departments or data centers)

e.) Combine multiple license keys (for the same product) into a single "master key" which is easier to manage

f.) Add or remove individuals listed on contracts as license admins or support admins (contract roles determine access to license keys on the portal)

g.) Be alerted when other people in your organization make changes affecting your license keys or entitlements

Tip #2Back to Top

Hardware Compatibility

vSphere 4.0 requires 64bit hardware. For proper support of the 64bit Guest Operating Systems, necessary virtualization BIOS settings need to be enabled. Please see KB article 1003944 (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003944) for more information. In addition, many server vendors started implementing some or all VMware specified CIM providers for server manageability. Therefore, health and monitoring information may be incomplete or inaccurate. Please read KB article 1010716 (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010716 ) for more information.

vSphere Hardware Compatibility Guide

Tip #3Back to Top

vSphere Pre-requisites

This checklist will detail the pre-requisites identified either as Required, Optional, or Recommended that should be reviewed and completed first, before starting to work on the upgrade from VMware Infrastructure to VMware vSphere.

vSphere Pre-requisites Checklist

Tip #4Back to Top

Support

Check for support on the new Operating Systems:

Asianux 3.0
CentOS 4
Debian 4
FreeBSD 6
FreeBSD 7
OS/2
MS-DOS 6.22
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
OpenServer 5
Unixware 7
Solaris 8 (experimental)
Solaris 9 (experimental)
Solaris 10

Tip #5Back to Top

Optimized Storage Capabilities

Tip #6Back to Top

vSphere Fault Tolerance

Check out Kevin Vogl's (VP Virtualization) recent blog entry for one of the most talked about new features in vSphere: "vSphere Fault Tolerance - Great tool with some limitations".

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