using the console in vSphere client on ESXi host

[stevedahlberg]

First time user - i got port 902 TCP incoming opened in firewall (no egress rule) and now i can open a console pane in the vSphere client to a virtual machine on my ESXi host. The Windows 2008 Server Std disk is in the host server, but all i see is screensful of "Enter the Workstation Name:" and no response to any keyboard input. Is there something else i need to do after creating the virtual machine and powering it on in order to have keyboard input with the console feature of vSphere client, as the client is the only way to install the guest OS, right?

[stevedahlberg]

Ack, sometime while posting, i did indeed get keyboard input and when i typed in what i thought was the hostname to start the install process, it immediately began PXE booting and pulling an image down from our Zenworks server. I suspended the virtual machine, since every time i aborted it immediately started again.

I'm not sure why the PXE boot option happened when i powered on the virtual machine for the first time with the WIN2008 server disk in the drive ... I think i'll reboot the virtual machine, but if anyone is used to doing this and has encountered a similar situation, please let me know, i'm not sure if i need to physically be in the room with the server to get into BIOS or not ...

-steve

[stevedahlberg]

Nevermind, i discovered that the default setting for the cd drive was "client" and not host ... i was able to change it to Host, then enabled Connected at Connect at Power On and now i can see the cd ...