Mastering VMware vSphere™ 4

7.4. Managing and Modifying Virtual Machines

Just as physical machines require hardware upgrades, a virtual machine might require hardware upgrades 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 virtual machine requires a modification of the virtual hardware configured for the guest operating system to use.

In most cases, modifying a virtual machine requires that the virtual machine is powered off. There are exceptions to this rule, as shown in Figure 7.25. You can hot-add a USB controller, an Ethernet adapter, a ...