In VMware, using VMFS-6 as the datastore filesystem introduces automatic storage reclamation. This process, also called "VMFS unmap" runs in the background (by default at low priority so it doesn't interfere with performance) to clear allocated unused storage space by sending "unmap" commands to the underlying storage so it can reclaim the blocks for other uses.

Sometimes it may become necessary to (temporarily) turn off (or on, if it's turned off already) storage reclamation on a datastore. You can do this through the WebClient but if you want to change this for a bunch of datastores, you can also do this via PowerCLI. While the latter is pretty complicated, William Lam  ...

By default, VMware Tools are automatically updated when power-cycling a VM each time a new version is available. This may not be desirable, and currently, there is no way to change this behaviour anywhere in the settings. This setting can however by changed manually on a VM-basis, by manually editing the VM's configuration file (.vmx).

Although there's mention of a global setting in Fusion's configuration files, many users report this as not working, so I only mention the per-VM setting here.

First, make sure your VM is not running. Preferably, close VMware Fusion entirely (⌘ + Q).

Using Finder or Terminal, navigate to the VM folder. When using Finder, you'll need to right-click you  ...

Coredumps are used for analysis and debugging if/when a ESX host "crashes" with a "kernel panic". This is visualized by a purple screen (often called PSOD, similar to Windows'es "Blue Screen Of Death").

VMWare ESX 5.5 and newer introduces the ability to perform coredumps to a file instead of a partition.

To configure this, you need access to the ESX host's CLI (either through vSphere Management Assistant (vMA), directly on the host through console or SSH, or some other method). For this to work, you need "root" access (or the equivalent of it through vMA).

Once logged on, take a directory listing of the VMFS datastores to determine on which datastor  ...

After migrating your on-premise Exchange mailboxes to Office 365 using Hybrid method, and subsequently decommissioning your on-premise Exchange, you may run into the issue where it is not possible to enable the in-place archive for a mailbox through the online Exchange Admin Portal or ECP. Attempting to do so will trigger an error.Microsoft has released some Powershell scripts to work around the issue. You can run the scripts to enable or disable the in-place archive for a certain mailbox. The script does not need any prerequisites other than the Powershell AD module and the user running the script must have the proper permissions as outlined on the downloads page.

https://docs.microsoft.co  ...

A while back, Microsoft has introduced new security defaults in Windows 10 and Server 2019, disallowing unauthenticated guest access to shares. While this is a good security best practice, it can also break Samba implementations running on Linux. Older versions of Windows (and versions with this policy disabled) can still access the shares, but with the policy in effect, connections immediately fail.

While it would be possible to disable the policy, it's not a very good idea as it is a potential security flaw. A better solution is to fix it on your Linux Samba server, which can be easily done by completely disabling guest access and enforcing SMB3 and password encryption.

Add these lines t  ...

Occassionally, the vCenter may run out of disk space on a specific disk, in which case it may become necessary to resize it. While there are many articles written about resizing a disk (like this), VMware also provides a very useful auto-resize script which automatically does the work for you, significantly improving the user experience even to those who are not familiar with resizing partitions and/or LVM in Linux. The best part is that it can be done online, so no need to stop services.

Log on to the vCenter console through SSH or through VMRC using the root account. If you wish to use SSH, you may need to enable it first through VAM.

Determine which virtual disk needs resizing. VCSA use  ...

With the release of Chrome (and Edge) version 92, a new feature called CECPQ2 was introduced, hardening the TLS 1.3 keychain against brute-force attacks from quantum computers. Unfortunately, this breaks many SSL scanning (IDS) implementations on security appliances (such as firewalls). A workaround is to either temporarily disable scanning or disable CECPQ2 in the browser through a group policy (or registry key).

To turn off CECPQ2 for Chromium, create the following registry keys:

Chrome:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Google\Chrome"CECPQ2Enabled"=dword:00000000

Edge:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Edge"CECPQ2Enabled"=dword:00000000

A browser   ...

Occassionally, it may be necessary to perform disk consolidation. If you have a lot of VMs which need consolidation, it can be tedious to do this in the webclient. Fortunately, it's also possible to mass-consolidate via PowerCLI.

Install and log in using PowerCLI.

To show which VM's need consolidation, run:

Get-VM | ? {$_.Extensiondata.Runtime.ConsolidationNeeded}

To actually perform disk consolidation, run:

Get-VM | ? {$_.Extensiondata.Runtime.ConsolidationNeeded} | % {$_.ExtensionData.ConsolidateVMDisks_Task()}