In this video from ITFreeTraining I will look at installing VMWare Hypervisor 5.1 on a standalone
server. This software allows the server to run virtual machines that can be controlled
from remote. The software is completely free and all you need to do in order to use it
is have a computer that meets the minimum hardware requirements.
Listed here are the requirements for vSphere. The main concern is the CPU. It needs to be
a 64bit CPU with 2 or more cores. It also needs to support NX, XD, LAHF and SAHF. These
are features of the CPU. NX is found on AMD CPU’s and XD on Intel CPU’s. LAHF and
SAHF are found on both CPU’s. You will need to check with the manufacturer of the CPU
to ensure that it supports these. If the CPU was manufactured in the last few years it
should support these requirements. VMWare supplies a tool on their web site that you can
test the CPU. If you attempt to install vSphere on a system that does not have these features,
you will get the following error message. vSphere will still install because even though
these features are not detected, the problem may be that virtualization has not been enabled
in the bios. If you get this message, check your bios to make sure the virtualization
setting is enabled. If the option is not present in the Bios, you may need to upgrade your
bios. If it is enabled and vSphere does not work correctly, it may be that your CPU does
not meet the minimum requirements for virtualization.
The last requirement of vSphere is that you have at least 2 Gigabytes of ram. If you are
planning to run a lot of virtual machines on the same server, the more RAM the better.
I will now change to my Windows 8 computer to look at how to download and install the
required software for vSphere.
First of all I need to download the vSphere software and the client admin software. To
do this, I will open internet explorer and go to the web site VMWare.com.
Once the page has loaded, I next need to select the link at the bottom right, “Trial and
Free Products”. The product that I am interested in is vSphere Hypervisor 5 at the bottom of
the web page. Once I select this I will be taken to the download page.
Even though the software is free, you do need to register on the VMWare web site in order
to download it. I have already registered a username on this site, so I will enter in
my username and password and login to the site.
When I scroll down the web page notice that there is a license key. Even though the software
is free, it does require this license key, so I will copy it to the clip board for use
later on.
There are 3 different downloads here. The Hypervisor, VMware tools and the client software.
I can install VMWare tools using the client software so there is no need to download it.
Firstly I will download the top download, VMware vSphere Hypervisor.
If you select the option, start download manager, this will use their VMware download manager
to download the file. The advantage of this is that you can pause and restart the download.
A useful feature if you are downloading the file using an unreliable network. In this
case, my network is quite reliable so I will select the second option, manually download,
and choose to save the download to the desktop.
Once I install the hypervisor I need software to manage it. This software is the third download
listed, VMware vSphere Client. I will also download this software and save it to the
desktop. The downloads will take a while to complete, so I will pause the video and return
once they are done.
The downloads have completed. The hypervisor is in iso format which can be burned to a
CD using CD burning software. In this case, I want to use a USB key to install the software.
To do this, I will use software available on the web site PenDriveLinux.com.
From the main page I need to select the option “Universal USB Installer”. Once the page
loads, I need to scroll to the bottom and press the download button. The advantage of
this software is, as you can see, I did not need to install anything and thus I can effectively
run it directly from the web site.
Once I accept the license agreement, I next need to select the distribution from the pull
down list. VMware will not be in the list, however since it uses linux, I can choose
the last option, “Try Unlisted Linux iso”.
Next I need to select the drive letter of my USB key and since the USB key has data
on it, I will tick the tick box to format the USB key.
Once I press create I will get a window telling me what is about to be changed on the USB
key. Once I press yes, the VMware Hypervisor ISO will be copied over to the USB key and
the USB key configured for booting.
The process takes a few minutes to complete so I will pause the video and return shortly.
Now that the USB key has been configured, I can close the software and the web site
and remove the USB key from this computer. I will now put the USB key in the other computer
that I want to perform the install on and I will start it up.
On this particular bios, if I press F12 this will bring up the boot menu. From the boot
menu, I can select my USB key which will appear as a Hard Disk. For a one off install like
this, it is easy to use the boot menu rather than change the boot order in the bios.
The first screen of the install will ask if you want to boot the installer or boot from
the local disk. The local disk option is there just in case you boot off the USB key by mistake.
As you can see, if you do not choose an option the installer will automatically start loading.
This is quite an old computer, so the boot process took just under 10 minutes to complete.
For this reason, I will pause the video and return shortly.
Once the installer has finished loading up, the first screen will welcome you to the install
and remind you that you should check the compatibility guide to ensure your hardware is supported
by VMware. Not all hardware is supported.
Once I press enter and move on, the next screen will ask me to accept the license which I
will do by pressing the F11 key.
The installer will now detect the drives in the system that can be used for the install.
I will select my local Sata hard disk and move on.
Next you need to select the keyboard which I will accept the default US Default.
On the next screen I need to enter in a root password for the system. It is important to
remember this password as I will need it later on to access the system using the client software.
Once I enter in a password and move on, the installer will next ask you to confirm that
you want to continue the install which will effectively repartition the hard disk removing
all the data on the hard disk. This is what I want so I will press F11 to start the install.
The process took about 10 minutes to complete on this computer so I will pause the video
and return once it has finished.
The installer will now tell you the install is complete. All I need to do now is press
enter to reboot the system into VMWare Hypervisor.
The computer will now boot up and you will notice the screens look much the same as those
from the installer. The process takes a couple of minutes, but nowhere near as long as when
I first booted form the USB key. So once again, I will pause the video and return shortly.
The system has booted, but still requires some basic configuration to be performed so
that remote administration can happen. To do this, I will press F2 to customize the
system and then enter in the root password when prompted.
First I want to configure the network adapter, to do this, select the option Configure Management
Network.
At the top is the option network adapters which I will select. This shows all the network
adapters in the system. In this case I only have the one. If you have multiple, you should
ensure that the network adapters that you want to use are ticked.
If I now go back to the previous screen, the next option that I want to select is IP Configuration.
You can see by default DHCP is used, but I want to configure a static IP address. So
I will make the required changes and go back to the previous screen.
You can also configure an IPv6 address, but I am not using IPv6 on this network so I will
not worry about configuring this. This only effects the management interface, it does
not affect the ability of any virtual machines to use IPv6.
Next I will select the option DNS Configuration. The DNS server is already configured correctly,
this information was obtained from DHCP originally, so I will just change the hostname to something
a bit more meaningful.
That is it for the network configuration, once I exit DNS I will press escape and I
will be asked if I want to apply the changes and restart networking, which I do.
This is all you need to do to configure the VMware hypervisor, the rest is done with the
client. With any luck, once this configuration is done, you will never need to access the
console on the computer running VMware Hypervisor again. I will now change back to my Windows
8 computer to look at how to install the client.
To install the client, I will run the setup that I downloaded earlier and saved to the
desktop. First of all, the setup files need to be extracted, this took about 3 minutes
to complete on this computer so I will speed up the video so we do not need to wait.
Once the files have been extracted, I will be asked what language to use which I will
accept English United States.
Once the setup starts up, the install is quite a simple one. Once I pass the welcome screen,
I next need to next my way past the patent agreement screen followed by accepting the
license agreement.
On the next screen I need to select where I want to install the files to, which I will
accept the default location and move on. Lastly I need to press install to start the install.
I have fast forwarded the video a bit here because on this computer the setup stayed
on a blank desktop for about five minutes before this screen appeared. If it does this
on your computer this is normal.
Setup will now start coping files over. This process took a while to complete so I will
pause the video and return shortly.
Now that the setup is complete, I can press finish and run the VMWare vSphere client shortcut
found on the desktop.
Once the client software has been installed, all I need to do is enter in the IP Address
of the server and the username and password.
I will get a warning message about certificates. Since I am not using certificates on this
network it is safe to ignore this message and move on.
Once the interfaces loads up, I will get a message reminding me that I have 60 days to
license this software before it expires. I can select the link in the message to enter
in the license key, however I will press o.k. on this message and enter in the key another
way.
From the management interface, I will select the tab Configuration. In configuration, I
will go down and select Licensed Feature and then select the option at the top right edit.
From here, it is just a matter of selecting “Assign a new license key to this host”
and then pasting the license key that I obtained from the VMWare web site that I download the
software from. Once this is done, I can exit out of here and go back to the management
interface.
Well that’s it. The VMWare Hypervisor is installed and the software is installed to
manage it. In the upcoming videos I will look at how to install the virtual router using
Lunbuntu and how to configure the virtual networking in VMWare. I hope that you have
enjoyed this video and found it informative and I hope to see you in the next videos.
Thanks and see you next time.