Modifying Virtual Machines

Just as physical machines require hardware upgrades or changes, a VM might require virtual hardware upgrades or changes to meet changing performance demands. Perhaps a new memory-intensive client-server application requires an increase in memory, or a new data-mining application requires a second processor or additional network adapters for bandwidth-heavy FTP traffic. In each of these cases, the VM requires a modification of the virtual hardware configured for the guest OS to use. Of course, this is only one task that an administrator charged with managing VMs could be responsible for completing. Other tasks might include leveraging vSphere's snapshot functionality to protect against a potential issue with the guest OS inside a VM. We describe both of these tasks in the following sections, starting with how to change the hardware of a VM.

Changing Virtual Machine Hardware

In most cases, modifying a VM requires that the VM be powered off. There are exceptions...