Fun at home with VMWare ESXi, CentOS netinstall, and Windows Server 2008 R2

At long last, I am building that home VMWare ESXi host, to be the home for a few OS'es, including CentOS 5, and Windows Server 2008 R2, as my personal server playgrounds.

Here are a few tips and tricks I learned along the way, that you may find useful, if you ever do this at home (try it at home, kids, it's fun and safe!).

So. The environment:

Dell PowerEdge 830 tower server which has:
4GB memory (would love to upgrade, but not willing to pay the $$)
CERC SATA RAID controller
3 x 250GB disks, RAID5 configuration

First, VMWare ESXi. I wasn't willing to install Windows OS first, and then VMWare server, so I was on a mission to figure out which ESXi version (as ESX is nowhere to be found anymore), would work on my four year old server. It wasn't 4.1, and the free version is now called VMWare VSphere Hypervisor 4.1. But the HCLs say no way Jose to my 4 year old box, so I need version 3.5, open source.

So I searched, and searched, and found a link at long last to ...
http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vsphere_hypervisor_esxi/3_5

File: VMware-VMvisor-InstallerCD-3.5.0_Update_5-207095.i386.iso

Register, by the way, and you get a free license. Don't register, and VMWare will commit suicide in 60 days.

Burn that puppy to a CD, and boot from it. Installed like a charm, like a champ, configure your datastore as you will, I made all available space the datastore.

Once you get that license, add it ...
In the Virtual Infrastructure Client, select the server, click on the Configuration Tab, select "Licensed Features" and add the serial number.

I downloaded CentOS-5.5-i386-netinstall.iso so I would not have to download 5 ginormous CentOS install ISOs. LOVE netinstall!

Then I created a folder under the main datastore on the ESX host, ahem, ESXi host, so I could mount the ISO like a CD for the new VM.

On the ESX host, Configuration tab > Storage option > right click on the Datastore > Browse datastore.

Create a new folder, I called mine Distros. Open folder, click the Upload icon, and you can upload the CentOS ISO to that directory.

Then ... the fun part!

Create a new VM for CentOS, name it as you will.
In the Settings, for the CD/DVD drive, select Datastore ISO file, and browse to the ISO.

Here's the one tricky part, figuring out the server and path to the rest of the images needed by the CentOS netinstall. After browsing the many CentOS mirrors, this is what worked, which was not the path where I downloaded the netinstall ISO. Go figure.

At the root URL for the mirror, browse to some path that could look like this:

http://hostname/5.5/os/i386/

make sure that the path you specify has an /images subdirectory. That's the ticket!

Good luck here. Erroneous errors including CentOS returning extra //'s in the path that could just drive you crazy. Just look for the /images subdir, and specify the parent path.

Then ... onto Windows Server 2008 R2 install, which is, of course, 64-bit. First attempt at install gave me this lovely error ...


For search purposes, here is the main clue:
Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this CPU is not compatible with 64-bit mode.

Say what?!

As I soon figured out, with a tip of the hat to google, there is a BIOS setting, disabled by default, that resolves this error in a jiffy.

Here's how I did it on my server:

F2 at boot, get into bios settings
CPU info
Virtualization technology > disabled by Default, change to Enabled

Reboot, and guess what? Problem solved! Windows Server 2008 R2 installed happily and easily, once I copied the ISO to the datastore as I did for CentOS. No small lovely netinstall though, MS you might want to get with the program.