ESXi 3.5

[mugambo]

Hi all,

Tried my hands on Wmware server and now downloaded ESXi 3.5. I am planning to consolidate our development environment with 2 win2k3 and one redhat linux server.

These server will run some IIS, Apache, MYSQL and MS SQL server databases

I came up with hardware requirements of:

6 GB of RAM

500 GM hard disk

dual core 3.2 processors

My questions are:

How many NIC cards should I put in assuming we have 15-20 users accessing these servers?

Can I configure each guest OS with a separate NIC or how does it work (do they share all the NIC or dedicated)? Any document on understanding on configuring will be appreciated.

Do I need to purchase or download any other software packages. My understanding is that after installing the ESXi, from the management console I can download a infrastructure client which will allow me to create the guest OSs.

Can I assign guest OSs to specific processors or WMWare will take care of it.

and last but not the least how can I create an image of a guest OS, so I can just install once and use the image for other installations.

Many thanks

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Welcome to the VMware Community forums. What sort of hardware do you plan on using. It's best to stick with the HCL servers and components and a RAID controller with battery backed write cache is important for adequate disk performance.

A good start for networking would be 4 NIC ports. You would then split those into 2 virtual switches (vSwitch), each having 2 NIC port. One vSwitch would be used to manage the host and the other for your VMs. You would assign your VMs to the single vSwitch and the bandwidth from 2 NIC ports should be more than sufficient for your needs.

You'll just need to install ESXi and then download the VI client (from https://ip_of_your_ESXi_host/) and that will install on a Windows PC. Don't worry about assigning VM virtual CPUs (vCPU) is specific physical CPU cores. ESXi will take care of the scheduling. It's a good idea to start with single vCPU VMs. What do you plan to do for backup?

Without VirtualCenter, you can clone a VM with a script or follow these steps.

1) Create your templete VM

2) Create a new VM, edit it and remove the virtual HD from it.

3) Copy the template VM HD with the vmkfstools command from the RCLI to the new VM's folder.

4) Edit the new VM and add the new virtual disk.

5) Boot up the VM and run sysprep, etc.

[mugambo]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply.

When you say 4 NIC ports, do you mean 4 physical NIC cards?

Can I create the vSwitchs and port configuration only using the VI Client installed on from the ESXi server? As I dont have the VCenter or VMware Infrastructure?

Regarding the back up not really sure. What are my options?

Thanks a lot!

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

The NIC ports could be 4 single NICs, two dual ports or a single quad port. With a typical server you'll get 2 ports and it would be good to add another 2 ports. But you could run this with just 2 ports or for that matter just one. It's just better to seperate management from your VM traffic and have redudancy in each vSwitch.

You can create vSwitches with the VI client (free download from your ESXi host once you install it). You can also do it with the RCLI but the VI client will be much easier. You don't require vCenter to create these.

Backup - you can still backup the VMs the way you would regular servers if you have that in place. You can also backup the VMs with snapshots which ease the restore of VMs. If you search this forum for backup you'll find a number of scripts and mention of a few commercial options.