vSphere is out on the market for about a week now and the blogosphere was already actively releasing all kinds of information about VMware’s next-gen “Cloud Operating System”.

I‘ve been reading quite a lot and made a list for myself with articles that I found most interesting concerning VMware vSphere 4.0 and I would like to share it with you.

First of all : you can read whatever you want but you only get to know it by testdriving it ! So download your VMware vSphere 60-day trial here (Official VMware website).  And while your at it, directly download the VMware vSphere Evaluators Guide (vmware.com); it’s a 120 page document that walks you through the new features.

Off course I understand that not everyone has a physical lab available, so for those who want to check it out on there laptop or regular PC I suggest the article Running ESX4 in VMware Workstation 6.5 by Roy Mikes. It’s a simple article that describes how to install the ESX product virtually. Do pay attention that if you want to run VM’s within that Virtual ESX server you should also implement the suggestion by Jim Mattson : Running nested VM’s.

To make max use of the physical memory you have available on your laptop you should check the article that describes Minimizing Memory Requirements by Duncan Epping. It describes how to remove the 2gig minimum memory limit and, for example, set it back to 1gig.

One other interesting article that I found worth mentioning was Virtualizing ESX4 on ESX4 by Eric Gray. It explains one of the new capabilities of VMware ESX 4.0 : it can virtualize itself, so that you can play around with features like HA, DRS and so-on.

When you’re already a bit further in the process you might find it interesting to know more about the upgrade and licensing options and you should check out vSphere 4.0 upgrade options (kb.vmware.com) and Licensing vSphere products (kb.vmware.com).

Conclusion: one week of General Availability of vSphere and there’s already ton’s of information available to really get into vSphere so enjoy it !

Update (05/06/2009) : Xtravirt just released their own whitepaper (PDF) on Installing ESX 4.0 on VMware workstation including nested VM’s.