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Vitalii Feshchenko
Vitalii Feshchenko
Storage and Virtualization Engineer. Vitalii has a broad expertise in mission-critical solution architecture and infrastructure project implementation. He's also a dedicated ping pong hobbyist.
Vitalii Feshchenko
  • Vitalii Feshchenko
  • July 23, 2024

How to build a home lab using your PC? Setting up VMware vSAN on nested ESXi hosts

Hi, guys, I finally managed to finish an article on deploying VMware vSAN on the nested ESXi hosts. Some had difficulties with setting up the networking for this scenario, so here’s a guide on this matter from me!
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Vitalii Feshchenko
  • Vitalii Feshchenko
  • July 8, 2024

How to shrink VMDK with a couple of PowerShell scripts?

While extending a VMDK file is a fairly easy task that can be performed right in Disk Manager, shrinking a virtual disk is a bit tricky. And, you need to be really careful because unless done properly, reducing virtual disk size may cause data loss! Sure, you can just use VMware Converter to make a VMDK smaller, but, for my money, it is always better to have a script at hand. In this article, I’ll discuss how to shrink virtual disks with 2 simple PowerShell scripts.
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Vitalii Feshchenko
  • Vitalii Feshchenko
  • July 3, 2024

VMware vSphere Content Libraries in a Nutshell: Why use Them (or Why Not)

Some time ago, discussing how cool VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 1 is, I briefly mentioned content libraries. That article was just an overview, so I decided not to go into details, saying that some features need their own posts. In today’s article, I’d like to share my hands-on experience with content libraries and help you to decide whether this feature can make your life any easier.
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Vitalii Feshchenko
  • Vitalii Feshchenko
  • June 30, 2024

VMware solution lifecycle. Does the End of General Availability mean the end for a solution itself?

19 September 2018, VMware announced the end General availability for vSphere 5.5 – their probably most installed vSphere versions to date. But, wait, why write about it in January 2019? You see, some being misled by a title starting with “End”, think that it might be the end for the solution… WRONG! To overcome this fallacy, I decided to write an article that sheds light on VMware Lifecycle Policy and proves that End of General Availability is not the end!
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Vitalii Feshchenko
  • Vitalii Feshchenko
  • June 25, 2024

ESXi 6.7 Quick Boot in a nutshell. How fast can you actually reboot ESXi?

Quick Boot is another cool feature introduced in vSphere 6.7. Why does it deserve own article? Because, with this feature in place, rebooting ESXi won’t lead to restarting a server itself. By optimizing the reboot path, Quick Boot enables to avoid time-consuming firmware and device initialization processes. Looks really handy when all you need is just applying small changes or doing some update quickly, doesn’t it? In this article, I discuss how to quick boot a server and share my experience of using that feature. How fast will ESXi reboot with that feature in place?
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Vitalii Feshchenko
  • Vitalii Feshchenko
  • June 17, 2024

VMware brought PMEM support to vSphere. How fast can your vSphere 6.7 VM potentially run on PMEM?

Some time ago, there was a post about new cool features brought to VMware vSphere 6.7 with Update 1. I forgot to mention one thing that appeared in VMware vSphere even before the update – PMEM support for your VMs. Well, I think it won’t be enough to write something like “Wow, it is good to see PMEM support in vSphere… it is very fast”. This innovation needs own article shedding light on what PMEM is and how fast your VMs can actually run on it. Unfortunately, I have no NVDIMM devices in my lab yet… but I still can simulate one using some host RAM!
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Vitalii Feshchenko
  • Vitalii Feshchenko
  • June 11, 2024

How to reset vCenter Server Appliance root password?

This post will be pretty handy for those who rely on their memory too much because it discusses how to reset vCenter Server Appliance root password.
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Vitalii Feshchenko
  • Vitalii Feshchenko
  • May 30, 2024

How VMware has covered performance gap between physical and virtual GPUs

Once engineers came up with the way to virtualize graphics processing units (GPUs), the new era started for machine learning, gaming, modeling, and whatever else IOPS-hungry: all these applications can now go cloud! In this article, I’d like to take a closer look at why GPU virtualization is so promising, who pioneers this tech, and how VMware managed to cover the gap between the virtual and bare-metal GPUs.
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Vitalii Feshchenko
  • Vitalii Feshchenko
  • May 14, 2024

Shopping for HDDs? My notes on how to do it right

It goes without saying that hard disk drives (HDDs) are one of the most common storage medium to date. Data centers, home labs, and PCs have them inside. No wonders, HDDs offer unmatched capacity for moderate costs per GB. Let’s take a closer look at how to choose an HDD. This article is going to be pretty much a long read, but there’s a flow chart in the end that helps to make your choice.
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