Since some time, VMware provides PowerCLI which is a set of modules for VMware vSphere. Except if you were in a cave last 10 years, you should know that PowerShell is a powerful scripting language. Initially, PowerShell enabled to manage only Windows Workstation or Server, but since sometimes, a lot of vendors make their own modules to manage their solutions (such as Veeam, VMware and so on). Moreover, PowerShell is available on Linux. For my job, I always use PowerShell. I’m a lazy guy, and if I have to make something two times, I make a script. This is the same thing for VMware vSphere. In this topic, we’ll see how to connect to vCenter and some commands to start.

When you implement a virtual infrastructure, you may want to convert your physical servers to virtual ones to improve your datacenter consolidation. In this topic, we will see how to convert a physical Linux server to a VMware VM. To make this conversion, I used VMware vCenter Converter Standalone. To host VMware vCenter Converter Standalone, you need a physical or virtual machine based on Windows Server. Usually, when I run this tool, I use a virtual machine. Then, I run the executable to process the product installation.

Veeam Backup Entreprise Manager is an optional component that enables to consolidate several Veeam Backup & Replication server through a single pane of glass. Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager provides a web-based interface to centrally control and manage all jobs. You can edit job, monitor them and have a consolidated view of the reporting of all Veeam Backup & Replication server. In this topic, we’ll see how to configure Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager.

In the previous topics, we have installed and updated Veeam B&R 9.5. Then we have connected Veeam to vCenter 6.5 to get visibility on VMware VM and backup them. To finish, we have added a backup repository to store backup files. Now we can backup a virtual machine. Once we have some restore points, we can also recover the VM.

In the previous topic, we have seen how to install and update Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5. In this topic, we will prepare the environment. We will connect to vCenter to be able to backup virtual machines and we will add a backup repository. In my lab environment, I have deployed a vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 (VCSA). The VCSA FQDN is admin.vsphere.lab.

Veeam Backup & Replication is a backup solution which works for VMware & Hyper-V VM and physical servers (Windows and Linux). Veeam has many advantages over the other solutions on the market such as Instant VM Recovery, the easy graphical interface and the host-level backup for SQL Server, Active Directory or file servers. In this series, I’ll show step by step how to deploy Veeam, backup a first virtual machine and restore it.

Last year I have written a topic on Starwind to create VMs from PowerShell. That enables to automate the creation process without using a GUI, either from Virtual Machine Manager or Hyper-V Manager. But a VM deployment is not finished when the VM is created but when the application is deployed. Before deploying the application, the OS must also be installed and specialized. This topic shows you the method I use to deploy and specialize a VM without a single click.

Windows Server 2016 has been released in October 2016 and comes with a new feature called Containers. Containers already exist in Linux world and enable to make OS virtualization. Basically, a container is an isolated place where an application can run without affecting the rest of the system and without the system affecting the application (MSDN definition).

In this topic, I’ll show you how to prepare a Nano Server image which will be deployed in a virtual machine. The operating system will be configured to run containers. To create the Nano Server image, I’ll use the Nano Server Image Builder tool which is a graphical interface to prepare the image in VHD, VHDX or WIM file format.

VM Fleet is a collection of scripts that enables to deploy virtual machines which perform I/O to stress the underlying storage system. To achieve I/O, the VMs leverages DiskSpd which is a Microsoft tool. When you implement an infrastructure based on Hyper-V, you usually want to get the maximum IOPS and MB/s that your storage can deliver. This tool helps you to get this information by stressing your storage. In this topic, we will see how to deploy a VM Fleet to benchmark the storage system.