A few good Parallels commercials. Too bad for them, as I've been using VMware Fusion lately. I think it is better. I also think these may be better than the original Apple ones that they're "parodies" of.

( Four YouTube embeds... )

(Originally seen here.)

I'm posting this here to my LiveJournal because I have no better place to post technical-oriented stuff right now. I've discovered how to take a hot clone of a running virtual machine in a VMware ESX environment. I thought it only appropriate to document it somewhere so it can be repeated by anybody interested.

Two nice features provided by VMware ESX and Virtual Infrastructure 3 are the ability to take a snapshot of a running virtual machine and also the ability to clone of a stopped virtual machine. However, what if you want to make a hot clone since you can't afford the downtime of the VM you're cloning? Well, using snapshots it is possible to do just that. It isn't clean, but it works.

( Read on to see how. )
If anybody knows a better way to do this, please tell me. At some point, I'll get around to playing with the VMware API and see if I can automate this to some degree. I'm not sure if the API would let you clone a snapshot though.

So here I am, reading the VMware Infrastructure 3 Installation and Upgrade Guide in order to be ready when my hardware and media shows up. I'm skimming along, picking up the important bits, and I stop dead in my tracks when I see this block of text about the installer:

Here are some helpful mouse identification hints:

• If the connector is round, your mouse is a PS/2 or a bus mouse.


• If the connector is trapezoidal with nine holes, it is a serial mouse.


• If the connector is a flat rectangle with a slot, it is a USB mouse.

What?

Let me reiterate that this was in the section of the manual about how to install VMware ESX, a component of the VMware Virtual Infrastructure. These are things that are targeted toward data centers, not random home users. I don't know about you, but I'd hope the person deploying my enterprise virtualization environment would be able to identify what kind of mouse they're using. If they can't, it can only go downhill when it comes time to setup the SAN, licensing services, VirtualCenter databases, and so forth.

Come on, VMware. You have really good documentation, but sometimes you just go a tad too far.