Network interface E1000E vs VMXNet3 on VMWare with Windows 2008 and 2012

I like to post this two interesting articles about the type of Virtual nic better to use in windows 2008 and 2012 on a virtualized enviroment on vmware:

http://rickardnobel.se/vmxnet3-vs-e1000e-and-e1000-part-1/

http://rickardnobel.se/vmxnet3-vs-e1000e-and-e1000-part-2/

On the second part of article became clear that is better to use VMXNet3 nic on W2012 servers.

How mutch memory is installed on yor vmware4 host?

If you have a Vmware farm and you want to upgrade the memory it is useful to know which banks are busy and which is the size of the memory mounted.

So activate the SSH console connect and the type smbiosDump | less, navigate to the memory information.

Be aware that on hardware like HP DL 380 the memory is divided in two parts one for each processor but the slot name is the same.

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VMWare patch install

Last patch for VMWare 5.1 is 
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2051208
 
and the command line to install it is: 
 esxcli software vib install --depot="/vmfs/volumes/ds-r1-l0/esx51patch/ESXi510-201305001.zip"

VMWare disk cloning via command line

The free version of VMWare as strange could appears is a very good version also in production environments, it lacks obviously of various function, one of them is the ability to create template or copy virtual machines, which are very useful.

The solution is to create a vm as a template, with a name like tmpl.w2k8r2 to distinguish from production one, then create a new virtual machine with the desired hw resources but without disks.
Then clone the disk with this simple command, it is also possible to create a mini script:

vmkfstools --clonevirtualdisk tmpl.w2k8R2/tmpl.w2k8R2.vmdk [vmfolder]/[newvmdisk].vmdk