Posts Tagged ‘esxi’
August 8th, 2009 | 
Author: This post is not for a sort of “religion war” between Microsoft and VMware.
I’m using daily both Microsoft products with satisfaction (not every time) and VMware.
I love VMware products, and this is not a secret, but before today, I’ve read everything about Microsoft Hyper-V, so I’ve decided to download it and test it.
The following is my opinion about VMware ESXi and Hyper-V comparison, this because Microsoft trying to tell us that his Hypervisor is similar (or better) than VMware one, and because I don’t think so, you can read here the main reasons.
This post will explain how to do create a VMware ESXi bootable USB pen drive, note that it will not be an installer, but a live system running on an USB drive.
First of all you should use it for testing hardware systems for compatibility, avoiding to install the hypervisor on the system, or you can use it to play (as I’m doing) with it on your notebook or desktop.
The following is the two procedure to follow to create it based on Linux and Windows operating systems :
This post will assume you’ve already have an ISO image of the latest VMware ESXi hypervisor on your system, if you don’t have it, please download it for free at http://www.vmware.com
Linux :
Locate the ISO image.
Mount it in a directory on your system (if you don’t know how, look here : http://www.riccardoriva.com/archives/64) and extract the file you need with the following commands :
sudo mkdir /tmp/iso
sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 VMware-VMvisor-InstallerCD-3.5.0_Update_4-153875.i386.iso /tmp/iso/
sudo cp /tmp/iso/install.tgz /tmp/
sudo umount /dev/loop0
sudo tar -xzvf /tmp/install.tgz usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_4-153875.i386.dd.bz2
cd /tmp/usr/lib/vmware/installer/
sudo bunzip2 VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_4-153875.i386.dd.bz2
Now insert your USB Pen Drive (at least 2 GB) in your system and locate it (tipically /dev/sdb).
Copy to it the image with the following command :
sudo dd if=/tmp/usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_4-153875.i386.dd of=/dev/sdb BS=1M
Umount your en Drive
sudo umount /dev/sdb
Reboot your system and check your BIOS configuration for enabling “Boot from USB devices”, and check if something goes wrong.
Windows :
For windows system you should need two free software (portable) to do all works :
7-Zip Portable : http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/7-zip_portable
DD For Windows : http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
Open the ISO file with 7zip, locate “install.tgz” and open it, locate “install.tar” and open it,
locate the folder “\usr\lib\vmware\installer\”, locate the fle : “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_4-153875.i386.dd.bz2″ and open it.
Extract the file “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_4-153875.i386.dd” in a temporary directory of your system (i.e. C:\temp).
Insert your pen drive (at least 2 GB) on your system and wait a couple of seconds.
Check the device ID of your pen drive using DD for Windows (by opening a command prompt on the DD directory) with the following comand :
dd –list
Then use the following syntax to copy the dd image on your removable device :
dd bs=1M if=VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_4-153875.i386.dd of=\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0 –progress
You’ve done
Hope this help
Bye
Riccardo
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Now that VMware ESX 3i is free, is very easy to try the virtualization on bare-metal and install you own virtual machine on it.
Some days ago I’ve tested the installation of VMware 3i on an HP ML310G5 with XEON Quad core X3210 and Intel VT Technology, two 144GB SAS hard drive configured as RAID1 e 4 ohisical Gigabit NIC.
The setup process is even too simple, infact you can boot from CD and wait to ask some simple question, for example :
- How to do ? Install or Repair ?
- accept EULA ?
- Install ? Are you sure ?
After few minutes (about 10) you’re VMware 3i is installed.
After server reboot, you’ll find the usual screen that invite you to download the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client to manage your brand new server, is the same client you’ll use to manager virtual machine and Virtual Center (if you’re luck and have one).
If you have a DHCP server on your network, the esxi get an ip address from DHCP and use it at the first boot. You can press “F2″ to change some settings without using the Virtual Infrastructure Client like :
- root password
- hostname and domain (FQDN)
- VLAN
- IP address
- Default Gateway
- Resolver
- Customize Keyboard layout
- Restart management service
- Reboot the system with factory default settings
At this point you will be able to connect to your brand new esxi server, but if you want to connect to it with SSH, you must edit a configuration file on your new system because esxi doesn’t accept SSH connection s natively.
To enable SSH connections follow these steps :
1. Open a shell on your system using “ALT+F1”
2. Type “unsupported”, and “ENTER”.
3. Enter root password and you’ll have a shell #.
4. Now you must edit with VI (if you don’t know how to use it, please go away …) the file /etc/inetd.conf.
5. Find the line starting with “# ssh ….” and delete the “#”.
6. Save and quit
7. Restart the busybox service by finding his PID and kill it with “kill -9″.
8. Use the command “inetd” to restart the service
Now you’ll be able to connect to your esxi machine with SSH.
Connect to your esxi with Virtual Infrastructure client and go to :
- Settings – Storage : to create a VMFS volumes to store your virtual machine.
- Settings – Networking : to configure “Virtual Switch” adding your NIC and creating all the Virtual Network you want (also using VLAN).
- Settings – Time Settings : to set an NTP server to keep your system clock update.
- Settings – Licensed Features : to enter your license key (FREE).
Browse the newly created datastore and create an “ISO” folder in which store your OS installation images.
At this point you can create all the virtual machine you want using the “New Virtual machine Wizard”.
Happy Virtualization
Bye
Riccardo
