VirtualPro

As soon as vSphere was put on General release I downloaded a copy of vSphere 4 ESXi for running on my home lab setup.  I’ve only recently started my home lab and the first machine I purchased was the HP Proliant ML115 G5 server. This was following a recommendation by Kiwi Si over at www.techhead.co.uk  who has extensively blogged about the suitability of the HP ML110 G5 and ML115 G5 for ESX labs.

If your interested in starting a home lab I can thoroughly recommend these HP server.  Simon even has a deal going with ServersPlus.com (UK) for free delivery on either the HP ML110 or ML115 server.  Get over to his hot deals page for further details.

Simon also has some great articles on getting ESXi 3.5 running from a USB pen drive.  This was a perfect place for me to start as I wanted to take advantage of the ML115 G5’s internal USB port and boot my server from a USB pen drive. So where do you start?

For those of you using an Apple Mac and wanting to conduct this excercise, check out the following article over on Tom Rowan’s blog

What do I need?

A USB Pen Drive that is over 1GB in capacity - nice and cheap at amazon
Download the vSphere ESX4i ISO image from here 
Download Shareware version of Winrar from here
Download Free Trial version of Winimage from here

How do I do it?

Once you have downloaded the ISO image open it up with WinRAR,  make sure you use WinRAR as I had problems with WinZip and UltraISO

Double click on the image.tgz file to open the contents in WinRAR and drill down to the \usr\lib\vmware\installer directory.

Within this folder you will find a file called VMware-VMvisor-big-164009-x86_64.dd.bz2. This is another zip file so double click on it and the contents will be displayed in a seperate WinRAR window.

Once inside extract the file VMware-VMvisor-big-164009-x86_64.dd using WinRAR and copy it somewhere locally on your PC.

Now install and open up the WinImage trial that you downloaded at the start of this process.

Insert your USB key and then select Disk and restore virtual hard disk image on physical drive as per the screenshot below.

 Select the physical USB drive from the list and click OK,  when prompted for the virtual disk file navigate to the dd file you extracted to your local PC.  This will now image your USB Key with the vSphere ESX4i hypervisor.

Once complete stick the USB key in a server / whitebox that supports 64 bit computing and away you go.  The screenshot below shows my own HP Proliant ML115 G5 running vSphere ESX 4i and all this from a simple 2GB USB pen drive.

ESX, VMware, vSphere esx4i, esxi, VSphere

Today is the day, VMware is now available for download and some really good news is that VMware are offering a 60 day evaluation trial of vSphere Enterprise Plus and vCenter Server Standard.

Three links for you, the first is the VMware vSPhere Download page and the second is the free 60 day evaluation download link.  For those who want to use the free version of ESX 4i and have a computer / server capable of supporting 64 bit you can get your free copy at this link.

Documentation for the various vSphere components can be found here http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pubs.html

Credit to Michael Hany over at www.hypervizor.com for the links to these awesome video’s below, which should help you get to grips with some of the new vSphere 4 features.

ESX Installation and Configuration
ESXi Installation and Configuration
VMware vCenter Server
VMware vSphere Client
Networking configuration
Storage configuration (iSCSI)
Create and manage virtual machines
VMware Host Profiles
VMware Storage VMotion
VMware vCenter Server Linked Mode
VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS)

ESX, New Products, VMware, vSphere esx, esxi, VSphere

There is an interesting post on the VMTN blog today with regard to the ESXi warranty and not breaking it.

ESXi is not your father’s ESX. There is no Service Console, so trying to fit it into the exact same processes that you’re used to with ESX isn’t recommended. I know, I know, you have all those scripts you’re used to running in the console. VMware is building tools to manage and administer your ESXi from outside the box, and while they’re not quite feature complete, they’re well on their way. So don’t pop the hood; it’s welded shut for a reason.

Sometime back I wrote a post on regenerating SSL certificates in ESXi,  a post that a lot of people land on when searching on the subject within Google.  Now to achieve the regeneration of SSL certificates in ESXi you have to use the tech support mode.  however it would appear based on this latest posting that this will potentially invalidate your warranty and support agreements.

So if you want to regenerate your SSL certificates on ESXi then I suggest calling VMware tech support to ensure your not invalidating any agreements.  Eventually if they get enough help calls they may provide a means of doing this through the VI client.  Now they may already have this but I’m not aware of it so if anyone does know of another way of regenerating the certificates I’d love to hear it.

ESXi, VMware Certificates, esxi, SSL, VMware

I came across the following video a few days ago when I was looking at some Hyper-V content. It’s a video by VMware and It shows a side by side install of the new Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 and ESX 3.5i.  Now the idea here is to show how long it takes to install both, it should be noted though that this video was done before the release of the bare metal Hyper-V server 2008. Having installed both I’d have to say that the ESX 3.5i install was still by far the easiest and quickest to complete.  Though Hyper-V Server 2008 (bare metal version) is a lot quicker than the windows representation in the video it is still fiddly and involved amending / shutting down the windows firewall from the command line Urrrghhh!!!

ESX3i Vs Hyper-V Installation - Battle of the Hypervisors

ESXi, Hyper-V, Microsoft, VMware ESX 3.5i, esxi, hyper-v, hypervisor