Creating "Golden Master" images can be broken down into two main parts Optimizing the VM within ESX Optimizing the Operating System For a complete overview see Best practices for creating VMware View "Golden Master" Images
VMware Capacity Planner is a business and IT capacity planning tool for the datacenter and desktop that provides an integrated set of analysis, planning and decision support functions to enable faster, measurable and more accurate infrastructure assessment services.
The VMware Support Toolbar gives you instant access to documentation, patches, live peer to peer chat and more. It can be downloaded at http://vmwaresupport.toolbar.fm/ httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W875WccJ_E
vscsiStats can be used to perform storage performance analyses. vscsiStats collects and reports counters on storage activity. Its data is collected at the virtual SCSI device level in the kernel. This means that results are reported per VMDK (or RDM) irrespective of the underlying storage protocol. How to start it …
How te get started with Powershell. Download and install Powershell from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/ Powershell 1.0: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926139 Powershell 2.0: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968930 Add Registry key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell\ExecutionPolicy and set to “RemoteSigned” (REG_SZ) Download and install VMware PowerCLI from http://www.vmware.com/go/powershell Download and install vEcoshell from http://thevesi.org/ Download and install VMWare community Powerpack from http://powergui.org/entry.jspa?externalID=2551&categoryID=290 References: Powershell …
A very good article about ESXTOP can be found at http://www.yellow-bricks.com/esxtop/ Reference card: http://www.vreference.com/public/vReference-esxtop1.2.pdf Read also the VMware article http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9279
VKernel’s award winning Capacity Management products help system administrators reduce the costs of virtualization and ensure application performance. VKernel’s suite of Capacity Optimization products reduce the cost of virtualization by optimizing server and storage resource utilization. The Performance Optimization products ensure application performance by identifying and resolving capacity bottlenecks. The …
Upgrading your Virtual Infrastructure Management Components http://download3.vmware.com/vsphere/vsphere-migration-part1.html ESX Host Migration Methods http://download3.vmware.com/vsphere/vsphere-migration-part2.html Virtual Machine Upgrades http://download3.vmware.com/vsphere/vsphere-migration-part3.html Implementing vSphere Licensing http://download3.vmware.com/vsphere/vsphere-migration-part4.html
To know if a Microsoft Product is supported on VMware (or another hypervisor), Microsoft has an easy to use support validation wizard