EXSI 4.1 Installation

[Eppetiano]

Hello all, please help me with this.

I have a hp proliant 165 G7 server running with windows server 2008 R2. I decided to install ESXI 4.1 on it and it seems ok, i installed the vsphere client on another machine and the connection between client and ESXI host as succeed. But the problem is that the server do not boot from windows server 2008 anymore!! It boots from vmware Hypervisor and stops with the following screen:

"VMware ESXI 4.1.0 (VMKernel Release Build 348481)

HP Proliant DL165 G7

AMD Opteron (tm) Processor 6128

12 GB Memory

Download tools to manage this host from:

http://xxxxx/

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx./ (DHCP)

<F2> Customize System                                         <F12> Shut Down / Restart

Please help me!!!

[mackemftm]

Yes, ESXi is a hypervisor that runs the VMs. Its known as a level 1 hypervisor as it touches the bare metal of the server directly. A type 2 hypervisor will let you have an operating system inbetween the baremetal and hypervisor (when you say windows 2008 R2 i am assuming you are using Hyper-V). i think this is where the confusion may be.

This means that with ESXi you do not use have an operating system per say you can access through the console to adminster your VMs.

If you have no access to this server though the network of physicaly then you have a problem.

ESXi is driven though the vSphere client (for configuring VMs) so you will need to have the both the vsphere client (be it a desktop or server) and the ESXi server on the same network.

Just to be clear you can NOT use the ESXi conesle to setup your windows VM and then install the vsphere client after, this must be done throught the exertanly installed vsphere client.

once you have your windows server up and running on ESXi you can treat it like a tradinal windows sevrer and put all the usual windows sevrvices on.

P.S. you could use the API to create the VM through somthing like powershell but lets not go down that road. 🙂

P.P.S some one might argue hyper-v is a type 1 hypervisor. But i dont class it as one.

Hope that helps.

David

[Scorpinus · Accepted solution]

What you are doing now is actually using more of your good server, in a better way.

You put a 2008r2 vm on it for ad, dns and dhcp, maybe another vm for websites, another vm for testing, another vm for....etc. When you run out of room, memory etc you just buy a new good server and start adding vm's to that one.

This way you use your resources more efficient and it is indeed a very good practice.

You do need an idea of where you want to go with this though. ESXi is very powerfull and has many features.

[Eppetiano]

I had disable the hyper-V role at server 2008 in order to install ESXI!!

My main goal with this ESXI is to create a virtual cluster in my company and to collect the benefits. Since hyper-V don't have the capacity to read vm from vmware i decided to install ESXI!

I had a linux vm created using vmware that i need to run, but hyper-V doesn't read it!! So installed ESXI.

That's why!!

[ChrisDearden]

ok now we're getting somewhere

a Virtual Cluster ? ie clustered Virtual Machines in a single host ?

Did you run any hyperV VM's ?

[EV_Simon]

You need to get out of the mindset of one box one server, those days are long gone.

A virtual server allows you to utilise the resources on your physical server much better (it's better to have a server using between 60 - 80% of it's resources than the 3 - 5% that most servers are really used for).

A good thing to understand with virtualisation is that having a single server will allow you to run multiple servers on a single hardware platform, what it won't allow you to do is use the additional functionality that ESXi can provide you, things like vMotion, DRS or Distributed Resource Scheduling, DPM or Distributed Power Management and HA or High Availability all require multiple servers (and shared storage) for that functionality to work.

Also make sure that when you do go down the route of virtualising properly that you ensure you have the right storage and backup for the environment you work with, it's no good using something like Microsofts Data Protection Manager when trying to backup the Windows Guests because DPM isn't VMware aware, so if\when you do plan to implement this properly look at a product like Veeam Backup.

[Eppetiano]

Yes Chris, i did!

On hyper-V, i created 4 vm's, one with server 2008 r2 (as well) that would be our mail server, with microsoft exchange installed.

Ok then.

So, my now i have my hp server running with ESXI. I created a datastore with the entire space of my disk (500GB, we have two sata disks on raid 1) and then create my first vm. Now i'm going to install server 2008 on it. So far, so good?

Thanks!!

[ChrisDearden]

Yep - that sounds like you are making some progress. I take it you have no shared storage ? Make sure you give the exchange vm plenty of RAM. Exchange 2010 is a very RAM heavy application.

[Eppetiano]

Another question!

I won't be able to control my ESXI host (server) without a sphere client (running on any other desktop) and without network connectivity, right?

Not like my previous server 2008 r2 scenario, where i have a display, a mouse and a keyboard connected in order to administrate it in case of lan lost, that's it, right?

Thanks!!

[EV_Simon]

Is this a production environment or for lab purposes? because if it's a production environment you may well want to investigate a shared storage environment instead of local disk especially if you're running Exchange on it.

[Scorpinus]

You can use the keyboard and monitor hooked up to the ESXi host to do basic configuration, but using the vsphere client would do a much better job for you.

And what would you actually need to administer? You could also put the Management network VMkernel port in a seperate network so only administrators can connect with a vsphere client to your host.

It is also a best practice to have atleast 2 network connections to management network and vm network. To work around the 'no lan' problem.

[TomHowarth]

Chris,  I would have expected better from you, your comment regarding Clearing your desk is both offensive and inappropriate.

If you found this or any other answer useful please consider the use of the Helpful or correct buttons to award points

Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

[Eppetiano]

Well guys, your help has been so helpful !!

EverythingVer..., but it is bad to have a datastore created from the server local disk? What kind of shared storage do you suggest?

This is a production environment.

[ChrisDearden]

I have edited my post - I hope my somewhat tounge in cheek comment wasn't taken the wrong way. Its incedents like this that remind us all that what may be a routine install should be treated with respect.

[mackemftm]

well your shared storage question is like Pandoras Box 😉

But you can have DAS, NAS, SAN in loads of flavours like iSCSI, NFS, FC all varrying in scale and pricing.

Thats a whole subject in its self.

But will not be able to have clusterd ESXi Sevrers without it.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned licencing yet or vCenter. if you are looking to cluster and use things like DRS and vMotion then you need vCenter. Now you are talking licence costs and it starts getting more complex. As I mentioned before you realy need to look at getting some training. Its ok learning in a LAB but if this is Prod you cant mess about.

[ChrisDearden]

Its not "bad" as such - but given that you only have the performance of 2 hard drives to service the requests of what may be many more virtual machines , if you dont scale up that storage performance in line with the I/O requirements then you could find that your VM's will suffer performance wise.

If you plan to add additional hosts , then you will need share storage to be able to cluster the hosts and run Virtual Machines on multiple hosts. In terms of what to suggest , you can spend a LOT of money on storage , but a little planning now can stop you from having to purchase multiple times. Have you any idea of the number of Virtual Machines you want to end up running ?

[Scorpinus]

Having datastores on local disks is not bad. It just depends on how available etc you want to have your enviroment.

A production minimum for me would be 2 hosts with shared storage and something called VMware HA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGBGVWLBv98

There are a lot of good brands for shared storage. Dell, EMC, NetApp etc.

[EV_Simon]

And if you're on a budget there are also the self build soltions out there (NexentaStor, Openfiler, Open-E DSS v6 and perhaps Freenas if they can get 8 working correctly).

You need to really look at what you're expecting from your virtualisation project, why are you virtualising and what kind of applications\services would you be running off it? etc, if you don't have a clear understanding of WHY you're virtualising then you open yourself up for a world of hurt if you don't spec out the environment correctly.

If you are going to be running services that have a lot of IO requirements then you're going to need a solution that scales because if you don't people's opinions of virtualisation will be swayed by the lack of performance and they will assume that it's because of virtualisation that things are running slowly whereas if it was correctly spec'd and configured from the get go most people wouldn't actually realise that there infrastructure was virtualised.

[Eppetiano]

Well, my project is very small and does not require lots from processing.

I'm thinking,

1 - EXSI server/host to support my vm's.

1 - VM to be the domain controller, DNS and DHCP server (running with server 2008 R2 64bit)

1 - VM to be mailserver (running with server 2008 R2 64bit and exchange server 2010)

2 - VM to some lab tests

I'm thinking on giving 2GB RAM for each one of 4 vm's, what do you think.

After this do you still think that i need a shared storage?

We have a small budget, but i still would like to have a great performance using the vm's.

Thanks Chris.

[ChrisDearden]

I notice you have 12Gb in your hosts - Server 2008 R2 tends to work best with 4GB and up. I would be tempted to start with 4GB for the Ad/Exchange VM ( remember you can change this ammount ) - Exchange Server 2010 is touted as being less disk intensive than perviosu versions. It achieves this by using a lot of memory and you will see high utilisation on the Exchange VM. Unlike Hyper-V you can overcommit memory, that is to say you can allocate more memory to your guests than you have allocated to the host. You can't get somethign for nothing however, if all of your VM's try to use that memory at once then you'll get a performance hit.

[EV_Simon]

Actually I would be tempted to reduce the AD ram requirement down to 2gb rather than 4gb due to the fact that you're such a small environment. That gives your exchange environment just a little more ram to work with.