back 2 basics

Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to configure a vSwitch

Duncan Epping · Sep 13, 2012 ·

In the previous articles we created a Datacenter, a cluster and added hosts to it. Now that we have done that we can start finalizing the configuration. This is just one example out of the many ways to configure networking for an ESXi host, and I kept it really really simple. This is not following any best practices, I just wanted to show some of the steps. In this scenario I have 4 network cards per host and I have VLANs for each network segment. Separating traffic through the use of VLAN is highly recommended and is a best practice.

Lets configure the virtual switch first. I will use a “standard vSwitch” for now. In this case we will set all vmnics to active on the vSwitch and control NIC usage on a portgroup level. [Read more…] about Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to configure a vSwitch

Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to create a Cluster object

Duncan Epping · Sep 12, 2012 ·

We’ve shown you how to create a vSphere Datacenter object, next we are going to create a cluster object. Again, this is fairly straight forward:

Click on “Create a Cluster” in your “Getting Started” tab.
Provide a name for your cluster and tick “Turn On” for both “DRS” and “vSphere HA”.
Click “OK”.

We will not tweak any settings around HA and DRS, the defaults should work for most, although I would prefer to use the “Percentage Based” admission control policy. For more details I would like to recommend reading the vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive. [Read more…] about Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to create a Cluster object

Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to create a Datacenter object

Duncan Epping · Sep 11, 2012 ·

I am going to assume you already have vCenter 5.1 up and running, if you don’t read this article. Once again, this is a “Back to Basics” series, so don’t expect deepdive info here.

First point your browser to the vSphere Web Client. The vSphere Web Client can be found at: https://<IP address or DNS name of your vCenter instance>:9443/vsphere-client/. Now you will see is a question if it is okay to install the “VMware Remote Console Plugin” as shown in the following screenshot.