vSphere - 20

A few weeks ago I filled a support request, because I couldn’t start a virtual machine on ESX.Next while ESX.Next was hosted on Workstation 6.5.0. ESX.Next kept crashing at 95% during the VM Power On.  An anonymous source just brought me up-to-date and whispered the following:

The WS 6.5 bug you noted earlier has been fixed. You will be able to run nested VMs under ESX.Next under WS 6.5.1, subject to the usual caveats (hardware virtualization has to be supported on your host for running the outer guest, and the inner guest is restricted to 32-bits). I can't comment on release schedules, but it is only a dot-dot release, so it can't be too far off.

VMware ESXi is the leanest, meanest hypervisor on the market today—and it’s available for free. Discover the benefits of VMware virtualization by learning how to get started in four easy installation steps.
 
Speakers: John Gilmartin, Group Product Manager, Product Marketing, VMware
Amir Sharif, Sr. Product Manager, Product Marketing, VMware

Gain the knowledge and skills to operate VMware ESXi in a single-server environment. This self-paced course contains brief concept modules, guided demos, and interactive simulations. Topics covered include: Virtualization Concepts, Server Configuration, Virtual Machine Management, Networking, Performance Monitoring, and more. This online course includes approximately 120 minutes of content with unlimited access by the subscribing individual for 90 days:

After completing this course you will be able to:

• Configure ESXi
• Install the Virtual Infrastructure client
• Understand and configure ESXi networking
• Understand and configure ESXi storage
• Monitor and configure resource use
• Build and configure virtual machines and install guest operating systems
• Clone virtual machines
• Monitor and manage virtual machine performance

This guide is intended for experienced Windows or Linux system administrators who will be installing VMware ESX Server 3i and will be configuring virtualization for the first time by using VMware Infrastructure 3. Specifically, it is intended for users who:

• Do not yet have the ESX Server 3i software installed.
• Do not yet have the VMware Infrastructure Client or the VMware VirtualCenter Server installed.
  
  This guide describes VMware ESX Server 3i and VirtualCenter and provides instructions for setting up and configuring a host, including the following tasks:
• Installing ESX Server 3i and adding the host to your network.
• Deploying the VI Client and connecting to a single ESX Server 3i host.
• Deploying and running a virtual machine.

Get a free license for VMware ESXi and build virtual machines in minutes with this easy-to-deploy, OS-independent hypervisor.

Features & Benefits
Virtualize processor, memory, storage and networking resources into multiple virtual machines with VMware ESXi, an enterprise-class hypervisor with a thin 32 MB footprint for added security and reliability.

VMware ESXi is the virtualization platform customers build upon for continuous application availability and infrastructure security. With VMware Infrastructure 3, customers can add the benefits of server consolidation, automatic load balancing and business continuity to ESXi.

YOUR LICENSE INCLUDES

• VMware ESXi
• VMware Virtual SMP
• VMware VMFS

Today, VMware is taking another step towards making virtualization ubiquitous by announcing that VMware ESXi will be available for download at no cost as of the week of July 28, 2008.

VMware has always believed that virtualization needs to be ubiquitous. Since 2001, VMware has provided the industry's most popular and reliable hypervisor used by more than 100,000 customers. During this evolution, partners like you have been critical in educating and delivering virtualization to customers of all sizes. In December 2007, VMware announced significant improvements with ESXi - its third-generation, stand-alone hypervisor. With its smaller footprint and OS-independence, ESXi ensures even higher levels of security and reliability while making virtualization easier than ever to deploy.

Mike Lavarick has written this guide using the beta release of ESX3i witch was handed out at the VMworld 2007 on a memory stick. When you take a close look at this guide you’ll see my name popping up in the acknowledgements, I’m so proud ;-). I was one of the first bloggers who published information about ESX3i. You can find my ESX3i articles here. The photo taken by Viktor van den Berg at the VMworld2007 in SF where I conducted an interview about the upcoming VI3 book.

Jainoxi made over 50 ESX 3i screenshots. Among these screen shots you can see how to create a virtual machine, how to import a virtual appliance, the Update Manager the Remote CLI VM and the Remote CLI console. But the most important is the imported Nostalgia virtual machine, this is an old DOS game running within a VM. :-)

I bought myself a 100 € Samsung 500 Gigabyte SATA disk and hooked it up to my workstation. On the configuration tab in the VI Client I selected the Storage option and created a VMFS.  I immediately received a failure message stating that “The response is not well- formed XML�?. There was still a format task running so I waited for a half hour before I restarted the VI Client. On the Storage Adapters configuration page I discovered my newly build VMFS. I made some screen dumps during this process.

When I tried to create my first VM on an ESX 3i Server, I realized that I needed to put an ISO on my newly build VMFS. The transfer of ISO’s with FastSCP or WinSCP doesn’t work anymore because there’s no Service Console in ESX 3i. But how do I transfer an ISO to my storage ? Well you can use the Datastore Browser to upload a file from the VI Client machine to a datastore in the VI Client inventory.

To upload a file:

1. Right-click on the destination datastore, and choose Browse Datastore.  The Datastore Browser dialog box is displayed.
    
2. Browse to the location to which you want to upload the file.
3. Click the Upload icon in the Datastore Browser toolbar. The Upload Items dialog box is displayed.
4. Navigate to and select the item you want to upload.
5. Click Upload.  A progress indicator displays the progress of the upload.