Installing VM to ESXi

[Bluecube]

I've got ESXi installed on a server. All wowfabgroovy. But I'm having a hell of a time working out how to install a VM to it. The VMWare website is appallingly confusing referring to two different versions of ESXi, vSphere, vSphere Centre and vSphere Infrastructure... All I want to do is to be able to take an OS install CD and install as a VM...

Can anyone prod me along the right path?

PS I've no Windows machines in the house - Apple only. Most of VMWares management stuff appears to be non free and Windows only.

[spoon_]

Sure you have ESXi then not VMware Fusion or other 'hosted' solution? ESXi requires dedicated hardware to be installed unless you nest it within Workstation or something...

Post a screenshot of what you have installed so far

[shaithis]

You need to install the vSphere client to manage the ESX host.

[Bluecube]

Definitely ESXi. I installed it on HP microserver.

Shaithis - thanks! Just off to look for this now.

[Moby-Dick]

point a browser at the ESXi box - click the link to grab the VI client.

[b0redom]

.....which is only available for Windows. It's a common bugbear.

[spoon_]

... and it still downloads from the internet

[Moby-Dick]

yeah they moved it to reduce the install size for ESXi iirc.

[b0redom]

I was stuck with the same problem. I had to use ESX because it's the only virtualisation technology I tried which supported proper hardware passthrough for MakeMKV BluRay ripping (of BluRays which I have mastered myself and legally own the copyright to ). KVM didn't seem to like it.

In the end I just installed Windows instance on inside VMWare Fusion on my Mac and used that. Once you're up and running you can always VNC into a Windows VM running on ESX. I have a MAPS subscription and have Windows licenses coming out of my ears though.

If you're not desperate to use hardware passthrough, maybe consider KVM or Virtual box on top of Centos or Ubuntu, they're pretty good - although it will require you to install the X server on your OSX host.

[Bluecube]

I gave up in the end. I can't believe such a large company specialising in virtualisation requires Windows only tools. Even the web browser based tool needed Windows. Very poor...

I rebooted into FreeNAS and worked through a handson to install Virtualbox as an extension. It was a bit fiddly but I've got Windows 7 running nicely on it and have been very impressed with performance. I think ESXi may have eked out even more performance but if I can't get it to work then it's no good to me...

[spoon_]

Which version did you try? 4.x or 5?

[b0redom]

I gave up in the end. I can't believe such a large company specialising in virtualisation requires Windows only tools. Even the web browser based tool needed Windows. Very poor...

I rebooted into FreeNAS and worked through a handson to install Virtualbox as an extension. It was a bit fiddly but I've got Windows 7 running nicely on it and have been very impressed with performance. I think ESXi may have eked out even more performance but if I can't get it to work then it's no good to me...

Ohhh do you have a link to that please?

[Bluecube]

Spoon - version 5. The install was easy but it was finding the tools to manage the install that proved to be the issue.

B0redom - http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/fr...=5466&start=40

Dropping you right in the middle there. Suggest you start at last page and work back to ensure you get the latest download. One thing to watch is that when typing the fetch command on the ssh session that you ensure you're fetching the latest VBox install! This tripped me up several times as I was just copying and pasting. Also, I had to login as root in order to install this though no one else seemed to have to do that.

[b0redom]

Ah you're on 0.7. I guess I'll wait until 8.2 goes gold - it's currently beta.

[shaithis]

I was unaware that VMWare didn't provide a client for OSX....seems a bit of a short-sight :S

There is a limit client built into Fusion (if you can get a licence for that) or you could dual-boot the Mac with Windows or Linux to admin the ESX box.

Non-ideal solutions

[b0redom]

Is there a Linux client now? Last time I looked I could only find a Windows client.