- Selecting VM in the main drop down menu
- Click Table and you’ll see all the VMs in table format.
Both the management flavours available will be discussed and the difference between the two is a vCenter Server registration or no venter Server registration so the options are:
ESXi Host VM Management
The actions available per VM in the ESXi host VM management mode, which is the default one, will be shown when you highlight a VM.
- Launch Console
- Power Operations
- Power On – Not visible on the above print screen since the VM is powered on already. There will be a PowerOn link instead of the “Power Off Actions” link as shown above
- Power Off
- Reset
There is a Create VM link to the (almost) top right corner and if you click that one before register a vCenter Server you’ll get the following error:
vCenter Server VM Management
So this requires a vCenter Server registration and will give quite a few more options. This section will include:
vCenter Server Registration
Setup the vCenter Server registration by following the below procedure.
- Click the Gear Icon and select vCenter Registration
- Fill in the information required and click Register.
- Address
- Port
- Admin Username
- Admin Password
Highlight a VM to verify you got some additional VM management options.
VM Management
After the vCenter Server registration is completed we will have the following VM Management options available:
- Create
- Clone
- Delete
- Launch Console – Not new with the vCenter Server registration
- Power Operations
- Power On – Not new with the vCenter Server registration
- Power Off – Not new with the vCenter Server registration
- Reset
- Guest Shutdown
- Guest Reboot
- Suspend
- Update
Let’s cover the new options one by one.
Create
Create a VM by following the below procedure
- Click the Create VM link
- Fill in the information required and click Save
- Name
- Description
- Guest OS
- vCPUs
- Number of Cores per vCPU
- Memory
- Add the number of disks you want and it include (per disk) the following options:
- Type
- Operation
- BUS Type
- Storage Container
- Size
- Add number of NICs required and it includes (per NIC) the following options:
- VLAN Name – vSphere Port Group
- Network Adapter Type
- Verify your settings and click Save
The VM, VM100, is created and i verified that via the vSphere HTML5 interface. Pay attention to the Configuration and Notes.
Clone
Clone a VM by following the below procedure
- Highlight the VM you want to cone, in my case VM1000, and click Clone
- Fill out the VM specification (Name, CPU, Memory) and click Save. The following options are clone workflow specific parameters.
- Number Of Clones – Default value is 1
- Name – Default the name is based on VM name plus -1. in my case VM1000-1
- In my case i wanted to make 2 clones of the VM and use them for a specific application so my configuration looks like the following
- Verify the VMs were created
- Prism
- vCenter Server
- Prism
Update
Update a VM by following the below procedure.
- Highlight the VM you want to update, in my case VM1000, and click update
- Make the necessary changes for one or more of the below fields and click Save
- Name – Will change the VM display name and not the files on the NFS datastore.
- Description
- vCPUs
- Number of Cores per vCPU
- Memory
- Disks
- Network Adapters
- In my case i wanted to increase Memory for the VM from 4 GB to 8 GB
- Verify the changed via:
- Prism
- vCenter Server
- Prism
Delete
Delete a VM by following the below procedure.
- Highlight the VM you want to delete, in my case VM1000, and click Delete
- Click OK on delete confirmation pop up.
- Verify that the VM is deleted and the delete task can be viewed from:
- PRISM – Tasks section where all VM operations will be displayed meaning create, update, clone and not just delete as shown below.
- vCenter Server
- PRISM – Tasks section where all VM operations will be displayed meaning create, update, clone and not just delete as shown below.