The normal procedure to convert a template to a virtual machine is to right-click the template in the vSphere Web Client and select the menu-option Convert to Virtual Machine. You would do this for example if you need to update the template with new software, patches or other modifications before using it to deploy additional virtual machines. When the virtual machine is updated you then convert it back to a template.
When you want to use USB devices in a virtual machine you don't want to connect them to your physical ESXi-host and then from there pass through to a virtual machine. By doing this you pin the virtual machine to the host. For example with a failover the virtual machine would boot on another host and would not be able to connect to it's USB-device, which is still plugged into the failed host. Also with vMotion your options are limited.
VMware offers multiple types of virtual SCSI-adapters to use in your virtual machines. Based on your choice of operating system VMware will offer a Buslogic or LSI logic adapter. There is however a Paravirtual SCSI-controller that can improve performance for your virtual machines, especially in environments with high IO-loads. This controller will provide greater throughput and lower CPU utilization for your VMkernel.
VMware offers several types of virtual network adapters that you can add to your virtual machines. Depending on the operating system you install it will select a default adapter when you create a VM. For Windows the default adapter type is the Intel E1000. There is however an adapter that will give you a better performance, which is the VMware VMXNET3 adapter. More information about choosing the right adapter, supported operating systems and the performance benefits of this adapter can be found in these locations:
Update Manager is available for all VMware vSphere customers that also run vCenter. It is a separate install on a Windows server that allows administrators to patch and upgrade ESXi-hosts but also to update virtual machines to the latest version of the VMware Tools and new virtual hardware. In this article I focus on these last two features.
Note: As a prerequisite for this article you need to have vCenter Server and Update Manager already installed.
With a default configuration of ESXi no virtual machines will be started when you start your host. In a cluster this also is not most likely necessary because you would migrate virtual machines to another host before you shutdown your ESXi-host. And of course in that case there are no virtual machines to start. But when you do not have a cluster and/or virtual machines are located on your server's local hard disk then it might be useful to start some virtual machines automatically when your server starts.
The vSphere Web Client contains useful filtering options. One of them is to create a filter based on the virtual machine compatibility. This makes it easy to find virtual machines that need an upgrade to the latest virtual hardware version. Just enable the filter (see image below) and select all compatibility modes except the latest one (in this example vmx-10). You will only see virtual machine levels in the filter based on the virtual machines in your environment.