vmware-cmd.pl is a command (perl script) to do all kinds of things with virtual machines from the ESX command line. You can use it to register and unregister virtual machines, stop, start and resume them and much more.

I wanted to use vmware-cmd to register a few virtual machines but it threw an error about not finding required perl modules. The solution to that was that I needed to run vmware-config.pl. That command will do the necessary stuff to get vmware-cmd.pl to work properly.

By the way, to register a virtual machine, it seems that you have to use the path to the vmx file using the UUID and not the label. Something like vmware-cmd -s register /vmfs/volumes/uuid/folder/filename.vmx. More information about that can be found in Mike Laverick's guide and also in the knowledge base. After registering the virtual machine, it will show up in VirtualCenter as well.

Usually, when I need to copy a file from a Windows box to ESX, I use WinSCP. WinSCP is free and does the job well. However, CPU usage is very high when doing the transfer.

An alternative to WinSCP is Bitvise Tunnelier. It provides a secure shell and file transfer. CPU usage during tranfers is also better and transfer speeds are better as well.

Take a look at both but my preferred choice at the moment is Tunnelier.

A majority node set (MNS) cluster requires a majority of nodes to be online. If not, the cluster’s resources will not be available. Obviously, a two-node MNS cluster does not make sense because when one node goes down, the cluster is down. A third node is needed so that one node can go down without impacting the entire cluster.

In the past, this third node needed to be a regular cluster node, thus requiring Windows Server 2003 Enterprise or higher. Not anymore though! Just take a look at the following knowledge base article. It discusses a new feature, called the file share witness. You will need to install an update to have this feature available.

Also take a look here and follow the link to more information about Exchange 2007 cluster continuous replication (CCR). CCR requires an MNS cluster so the file share witness feature will make it easier and less costly to deploy such clusters. It appears that the CCR preliminary documentation already refers to the file share witness feature.

VMware Server is out of beta and generally available. VMware Server is free but enterprise-class support is available as well. The support price is per two processors (sockets, not cores).

Please note that management with VirtualCenter 1.4 is possible as well. This allows you to manage multiple VMware Server instances, in addition to ESX 2.x. Note that VirtualCenter 1.4 is not free and that you need to buy licenses per pair of processors used by VMware Server.