Now you never said that, did you :)

 

As I've never done it then I'm afraid Google is all you'll get out of me!

http://www.techhead.co.uk/running-vmware-vsphere-on-an-hp-microserver

 

Posted 2 days ago

I tried vmware and I sorta liked it, but then I tried virtualbox and I liked that a whole lot better. VB seems to work fine for linuxy development servers (lamp, rails), can't say whether vmware might be better for production, or for windoze server. (I do run win 2k /xp /7 desktops on vb fine, though).

Sinkywinky, that is EXACTLY the shit I'm looking for. Cheers. Hats off to ye!

The movement to VMWare ESX is already huge in most large corporations, I have configured a lot of data centres full of VMWare machines for local authorities, large companies, health authorities and the like.

I started messing with it today. Seems pretty nice.

We put 5 ESX boxes into a public school in Wiltshire about a year ago. They'd already spent several million on a new building, so where they found the money for the network, servers and Cisco phones that we installed, I don't know.

I am just about finished with my storage and VMware proposal for the company I work for, decided to go for vsphere 4 essential plus instead of a full blown vsphere install (and saved £26k in licenses) The essentials plus does pretty much everything (HA, vmotion etc.) but limits you to three hosts, as I never invisage running more than 15 or 20 servers the saving made sense. Oh and I get a nice shiney new Netapp box to play with for network and VM storage :D

 

Hopefully I can get it signed off before the end of the year!

If you are still interested you can downlaod a full Vsphere esxi 4.1 server install from the VMWare site.

 

https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/index.php?p=free-esxi&lp=1

 

I have just been given a server from work for free (they were going to dump 4 of them! SuperMicro dual 3.4Ghz xeon with 2Gb and 500Gb SATA drive TBH)

 

My first VM (installing now) is XP SP3 just for testing, I need to get another 2Gb of Ram for it but I expect that will be eater pretty quickly.

 

Oh and this server is LOUD, I need to get some power in the loft and shove it up there.

 

Anyone recommend a flavour of the month linux to install and play around with? I was thinking of installing a web server and host my site to help learn new skills.

I'm liking just-released Fedora 14, but you might want to go 'pro' and wait for CentOS6, whenever they get around to it (basically a rebadged RHEL which also, just released a new version - 6)

Hmm, it seems CentOS don't do server releases, but Red Hat does a 30-day free evaluation release of RHEL 6. After that pricing goes steep. It does have a ton of virtualization upgrades though.

Hmm indeed!! I've been looking for a decent (yet free :-$ )virtualisation host for a while - what does this free version not do?

Limits to single host less cpu's and only 256Gb RAM, no vmotion, HA or physical to virtual importing and a few other high end option that you probably wont use. Other than that its pretty feature rich. From doing the esxi3.5 course and exam its a much better and easier platform to configure and use, I just need to book the upgrade exam now.

"only" 256GB of RAM :'D

Single host - so you can't set up a bunch of ESXi hosts and cluster them.. not needed in my case, good! Less CPU's - meh, more than two quad's is unlikely.

Does it have the built-in management console, or does it HAVE to be managed using vSphere :/ ?

edit: reading the f'in manual does answer a lot of my questions..

The basic managment console on the server lets you setup the network, DNS and initial security. Once the server is installed you pretty much leave it alone and control it from the Vsphere client.

 

One thing I did have a problem with is the disk setup, I missed the advanced setup and ended up using the whole disk instead of just a single partition so be carefull, luckily I had nothing of value on the disk before installing.

 

The install is about 70Mb and the server it self uses around 300 to 500Mb of RAM, which has left me with only 1.5Gb for the VM's. I have a copy of 2008 small business I want to play around with so I need to get another 2Gb I think.

That sounds pretty good then!
I think I'll be running it on a single quad-core Xeon with 6GB of RAM, so should be able to fit 3-4 Linux servers on it. Not quite sure about the disks in that box though, they're a bit iffy (ie: HP compatible ones instead of genuine..).

Well good luck and report back with your progress.

Thanks I shall don my fedora and download a copy.

Bah and double Bah, My 3.4Ghz Xeons do not support VT and therefor do not support 64bit Vm's :@ Grrr indeed. Ebay may be of help!

Nope that won't work as the chipset and socket wont take a VT enabled cpu.

 

32bit for me then :|

Last week I set up 3 2003 VM's using ESXi 4.1. I must say it's a pretty sweet setup! I need more RAM to make it run a little smoother, but overall I'm very pleased.