Christian Wickham

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Christian Wickham 's Posts

If you are converting the Window installation on a physical server to a virtual server, and keeping all the operating system and installed software in place (called a P2V or Physical-to-Virtual conversion), here are some tips and tricks for speeding up your P2V to make a faster P2V. Converting a… Continue Reading Tricks for a faster P2v

How do you restore the private key for a certificate? You may have generated a certificate request, and sent that request to either your internal Microsoft based Certification Authority (CA) or you sent the CSR to an external SSL certificate provider, and now you try and install the CRT (certificate… Continue Reading Recovering an SSL private key from a certificate

How do you make VMs automatically start after an outage? You may want a virtual machine to start by itself when a host is powered on, to maintain availability of the service of that VM – particularly if you don’t have a VMware High Availability cluster (like a single ESXi… Continue Reading Configuration of VM auto-start options for Service Machines

How long does it take you to boot up a server? I don’t just mean the time it takes to start Windows or Linux, I mean the time it takes the hardware to begin starting Windows. Next time you reboot a physical server, go and time it – you won’t… Continue Reading Hidden benefits of virtualisation – reboot time and the impact on server availability and regular operations

VMware are often focussing on the latest and greatest features and capabilities offered by their newest software. Of course, they are always driving forward and the next version’s enhancements and benefits are forefront of their minds – but there are still some people out there who are just starting on… Continue Reading Hidden benefits of VMware – uneven hardware

In my interaction with new and existing VMware customers, it strikes me how often people forget one of what I consider to be one of the best benefits of a VMware based clustered solution. It is often pleasant news for people planning or implementing a new VMware virtualisation solution to… Continue Reading Hidden benefits of VMware – pick and mix

If you build a cluster for a VMware virtualised infrastructure, you can use almost any compute resource that you have available. Do you want to mix a Dell R710 dual CPU host with 32 GB of RAM with an IBM BladeCenter Hx5 with a single CPU and 96GB – sure,… Continue Reading SDDC drives mix and match hardware

How can I get my server ready for the transformation from a physical server to a virtual server? The physical to virtual conversion can be done with a suite of tools, but need to be prepared carefully. Many people don’t know how to prepare for a P2V – or even… Continue Reading The right way to prepare for P2V

I have been working in IT for 22 years, and during that time there have been changes – more than a few. In the early nineties, I did a bachelor honours degree in IT – and my dissertation (thesis) was about user interface design. The main conclusion was along the… Continue Reading User interface design – evolving with consumption