Hostname does not resolve

[jrdba]

Hi folks. I'm getting back to VMware installations after a few years and am having a hard time getting my ESX5i install on VMware Fusion to work properly (testing/re-learning). After installation, i try to configure the network settings and am able to successfully setup the ip/gateway up but when i enter a new host name I am not able to get it to resolve properly on my web browser. I setup the static ip address as 192.168.1.19 and the default gateway and dns server as 192.168.1.1. But after setting the hostname as 'esx5i' (no quotes ofcourse) I am not able to resolve to the welcome screen on my Firefox browser to the ESX 5.1 Welcome screen. I can however enter 192.168.1.19 on the web browser and it brings me to the welcome page successfully. Also when i attempt a 'Test management network' the test only passes the ip addresses but NOT the resolving hostname (esx5i) - Failed. What am i doing wrong? Please help. Thank you!

P.S. My vm network is setup as 'Bridged' in case that was an issue.

[marcelo_soares]

This is completely a DNS issue, not ESX issue. If your machine is not capable of translating a name to an IP, you need to check your DNS server config.

[jrdba]

I actually do not have a DNS server setup, this is all just in a home training scenario (no AD server either). I suspect that may be the issue. Thanks for responding.

[weinstein5]

Without a DNS server you will not be able to resolve a host name - you can either just use IP address or create a host file

[JarryG]

If you do not have dns-server, you can still resolve names using "hosts" file which lists static IP/dn pairs. In mac/unix/linux it is in /etc/hosts, windows has it somewhere in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. Just add line:

192.168.1.1     esx5i

[jrdba]

Would I update the etc hosts file on the virtualized ESX 5i node only? Thanks!

[JarryG]

you can, but you have to update hosts file on the computer from which you want to connect to esxi (i.e. the one running vsphere-client or vsphere-server)...

[jrdba]

Thank you Jarry!