VMware Knowledge Base Use and Search Tips

VMware recently refreshed their Knowledge Base (KB), improving the navigation interface and presentation style. As you would expect, full details of the changes are available in a KB article, http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1012063.

If you are unfamiliar with the VMware KB site, it is recommended to start with the “Using the VMware Knowledge Base” article, http://kb.vmware.com/kb/878, which contains a collection of links to other articles that explain how to:

• Search the KB
• Print articles
• Find the published date of a article
• Determine the short URL for an article
• Find the Document ID of an article

While the search function is perfectly usable, an alternative method is available, courtesy of a web page that simply comprises a hyperlinked list of all KB article titles. It does not appear to be referenced from anywhere on the website, but it is certainly routinely maintained by VMware.

The page in question is http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/google/searchpage.jsp and exists purely to allow Internet search engines to easily index all the KB articles. Additionally, the very bottom of the page reveals that, at the time of writing, there are a total of 5,714 articles.

However, it also means that KB article titles can easily be searched for using the browser’s built-in “find” function, which depending on your requirements, may be a quicker way of locating the required article.

Other useful references are the the KB blog, the weekly digest of newly added KB articles, and the recently announced KB Twitter feed, for daily announcements of new articles postings; the links for which are provided below.