Virtual Machine Lifecycle

You have many options for creating and deploying virtual machines. You can create a single virtual machine and install a guest operating system and VMware Tools on it. You can clone an existing virtual machine or convert it to a template. You can also deploy OVF or OVA templates.

The vSphere Client New Virtual Machine wizard and the Edit Settings dialog box let you add, configure, or remove most of the virtual machine's hardware, options, and resources. You monitor CPU, memory, disk, network, and storage metrics through the performance charts in the vSphere Client. Snapshots let you capture the state of the virtual machine, including the virtual machine memory, settings, and virtual disks. You can roll back to the previous virtual machine state when needed.

With vSphere vApps, you can manage multi-tiered applications. You use vSphere Update Manager to perform orchestrated upgrades to upgrade the virtual hardware and VMware Tools of virtual machines in the inventory at the same time.

When a virtual machine is no longer needed, you can remove it from the inventory without deleting it from the datastore, or you can delete the virtual machine and all its files.