It is not new that VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is a very popular option, especially for small businesses which can save money on an additional Windows Server license.

It is a prepackaged and preconfigured virtual appliance with PostgreSQL database, vCenter server 6.5 components and also (in case you deploy “all-in-one” VM) Platform services Controller that contain all of the necessary services for running vCenter Server such as vCenter Single Sign-On, License service, and VMware Certificate Authority.

The VCSA is running Photon OS which is a VMware own lightweight distribution, optimized for fast booting, security, and scalability. During a long time, VMware was using Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) distribution, but the fact that VMware did not own the stack was a break to faster development.

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As is well-known, VMware has released a new version of virtual VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 in the new version of vSphere 6.5 platform. Now vCSA is Photon OS-based. It works faster; it is provided with built-in high availability tools and has a ready-to-use vCenter Update Manager (VUM).

Due to the numerous changes, many familiar features don’t work anymore, and the information below will help you to get back to the normal use of vCSA.

1. How to turn on Bash Shell and use WinSCP for vCSA

If you try to access vCSA server with WinSCP to download or upload files there, you won’t be able to do that:

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VMware vSphere 6.5 has been released few weeks back and many users would like to hit the upgrade button. Not so fast. In this post I’ll talk a little bit about what to consider before upgrading to vSphere 6.5. One of the good news is that there are no new license keys needed for vSphere 6.5 so if you’re currently on vSphere 6.0 you don’t need to enter new license keys.

Planning is a pain, but it is necessary step. Also, playing with Firmware on your physical NIC cards and applying proper firmware-driver combination is a hard reality before even thinking going further…. I have experienced that recently when upgrading my pNICs to proper firmware/driver combination (Those were the x710-da2 Intel Hyper converged 10GbE adapters).

Below you’ll find few points which are essentials to every IT admin.

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Just recently one of the main virtualization conferences VMworld Europe 2016 has finished. Traditionally, it has been held a while after the main VMworld in the USA. While in the USA VMware was speaking about the new technologies and the future of datacenters, in Europe much more attention was paid to the new features of updated VMware products. The main of them is, of course, VMware vSphere 6.5 server virtualization platform. We’ll start our overview with it.

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