6.7

After installation, you are responsible for securing and patching the
operating system.
VMware Tools VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the
virtual machine's guest operating system and improves management of the
virtual machine. It includes device drivers and other software that is
essential for your VM. With VMware Tools, you have more control over the
virtual machine interface.
Compatibility Setting In the vSphere Client, you assign each virtual machine to a compatible
ESXi host version, cluster, or datacenter by applying a compatibility setting.
The compatibility setting determines which ESXi host versions the virtual
machine can run on and the hardware features available to the virtual
machine.
Hardware Devices
Each virtual hardware device performs the same function for the virtual
machine as hardware on a physical computer does. Every virtual machine
has CPU, memory, and disk resources. CPU virtualization emphasizes
performance and runs directly on the processor whenever possible. The
underlying physical resources are used whenever possible. The
virtualization layer runs instructions only as needed to make virtual
machines operate as if they were running directly on a physical machine.
All recent operating systems provide support for virtual memory, allowing
software to use more memory than the machine physically has. Similarly,
the ESXi hypervisor provides support for overcommitting virtual machine
memory, where the amount of guest memory configured for all virtual
machines might be larger than the amount of the host's physical memory.
You access the hardware devices in the Edit Settings dialog box. Not all
devices are configurable. Some hardware devices are part of the virtual
motherboard and appear in the expanded device list of the Edit Settings
dialog box , but you cannot modify or remove them. For a list of hardware
devices and their functions, see Virtual Machine Hardware Available to
vSphere Virtual Machines.
In the Edit Settings dialog box you can also add virtual hardware devices
to the virtual machine. You can use the memory or CPU hotplug options to
add memory or CPU resources to a virtual machine while the virtual
machine is running. You can disable Memory or CPU hotplug to avoid
adding memory or CPUs while the virtual machine is running. Memory
hotplug is supported on all 64 bit operating systems, but to use the added
memory, the guest operating system must also support this feature. See the
VMware Compatibility Guide at
http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility
vSphere Virtual Machine Administration
VMware, Inc. 10