Choppy Graphics/Mouse in windows 2008 x64 VMWare console

Here is a tip shared to me. This will help with those Win2k8 werver.

1. Do your vmware tools install and hardware acceleration as normal
2. In Device Manager, right-click on the top of the device tree and select, Install Legacy Hardware
3. Tell windows that you want to choose the driver to install
4. Click Have Disk
5. Browse to c:\program files\common files\vmware\drivers\wddm_video and select the catalog file there.
6. Follow the prompts to finish the installation and then reboot
7. Go back into Device manager and remove the old video driver.
8. Everything should be smooth.

ESX 3.5 to vSphere 4 migration, Part 1

I am working to upgrade a small VM setup from 3.5 to 4. Everything now is running on 32-bit, and to get to the latest vCenter I need a 64-bit OS. Since I can't just upgrade my existing vCenter Server, I figured it would be easiest to just setup a new one and move my hosts to it. So here is step 1. It has worked well so far.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsp_4_legacy_host_lic.pdf

Enable SSH on ESXi 4.1 | Yellow Bricks

Just installed the latest version of ESXi and needed SSH access. Its much easier to do then with older versions of ESX.

This if from the article on Yellow Bricks: Enable SSH on ESXi 4.1 | Yellow Bricks

There are two different kind of Tech Support Modes:

1. Local Tech Support (Commandline access)
2. Remote Tech Support (SSH)

Enabling either of the two is really simple:

• Open the ESXi console
• Login(F2) and go to “Troubleshooting Options“
• Now you will see options called “Tech Support”, hit “enter” on either Remote Tech Support (SSH) or Local Tech Support

You could of course also enable it through the vSphere Client:

• Select the host and click the Configuration tab.
• Click Security profile > Properties.
• Click Local Tech Support or Remote Tech Support (SSH) and click Options.
• Choose the desired startup policy and click Start, then click OK.
• Verify that the daemon selected in step 3 shows as running in the Services Properties window.

(if you don't follow Yellow Bricks, it is one of the best VM blogs on the internet)