Creating a VMware 4.0 host server with ESXi

> Saturday, March 06, 2010 |

I procured a Power Edge T105 server with the following specs:

  • Dual Core 4450B Processor 2x512K Cache, 2.3GHz Athlon for PowerEdge T105
  • 8GB, DDR2, 800MHz, 4x2GB,Dual Ranked DIMMs
  • 160GB 7.2K RPM SATA 3Gbps 3.5-in Cabled Hard Drive-Entry
  • On board Network Adapter
  • 16X DVD-ROM,SATA, INTERNAL

 

Rather than installing VMware on the (smallish) hard drive, I grabbed a 4GB thumb drive lying around to host the ESXi hypervisor.

This video was a decent intro on install options for ESXi.

Steps to install:

  1. Burn ESXi 4.0 installer ISO.
  2. Followed these instructions to install to Flash drive. In my installer, the flash drive came up as “Disk0 JetFlash Transcend 4GB”.
  3. Restart, enter BIOS, select to boot from Flash drive.
  4. Hit F2 to set root password.
  5. Connected ethernet cable to server. Configured router to grant static IP address for hypervisor’s MAC address.
  6. Installed VMware vSphere client on my laptop.
  7. Followed these instructions to set up my ESXi license key.

 

All set. Next, I’ll create some virtual machines. Some project ideas:

  • Source control server
  • FreeNAS file server for photos and music
  • Web farm
  • Test for alternative web servers: NGINX, Squid, etc.