Video: vSphere4 Unleashed: 01 – Installing ESX4.0

April 27th, 2009 | Author: Hany Michael

It’s fast, it’s wild, and it’s out of NDA.
I’m furious, I’m excited and I’m off the hook.

If you are a VMware guru, the first few episodes in this series are not meant for you. You would probably be interested when we reach the level of configuring things like the Cisco Nexsus1000v, create host-profiles, or do some FT magic. Between now and then, it’s all for the newbies coming to our wonderful virtual world, and have no clue where to start and what platform they should adopt.

I’ve been willing to do a similar series in VI3 for quite some time, and start from the basics all the way to advanced configurations, but now that the vS4 is out, well, almost, I said why not, it’s a learning journey for me before anyone else.

You have to be patient with me however, the video recording is fairly easy, but the editing and production is quite hard and time consuming to present in this format. If you have any feedback, corrections or anything that can help improve these videos, please don’t hesitate to drop a comment or an email.

What are we waiting for? Let’s do this:

Posted in Tutorials, VMware, vSphere | Tags: esx, tutorial, vSphere

Baha_j

Thanks for video. can you help me. there are dell m1000e + brocade 4424 + dell powerconnect modules for blade + 6* dell m6(0/1)0 razors. storage on hp msa2012fc. i installed vmware esx. but it doesnt see no fc controllers. and no disk in storage. what i need to do to use our storage???
Hany Michael

Why don't you open an SR with VMware? the info your provided here might not be enough to troubleshoot this issue further...good luck.
Hany Michael

Thanks, and you are right! BTW the ESX 4.0 partitioning best practices are all over the internet if you google it.
virtuel

great video. I was left a little disappointed because I wanted to see more of the manual partitioning for vSphere - partition sizing etc best practices.

tres bien
Steven

Thanks!
Hany Michael

Hi Juan,

I used also the M1000e chassis in my video, and as far as I know it comes with the Chassis Management Controller (CMC) module as a standard not option. This is where you can access the console of your blades and mount virtual CDs. I believe it is set for DHCP by default, but you can use your chassis LCD to set it to static IP, note also that the CMC IP address will default to the standard IP address settings of 192.168.0.120, 255.255.255.0, and gateway of 192.168.0.1. The default username is “root” and password is “calvin”.

As per the VT, the vSphere will still work on processors that doesn’t have FT (I’m already using some old HP blades with no VT) but for things like FT to work, yes you must have VT. You should refer also to the compatibility matrix for the FT, to ensure that you have a supported processor.

Hope this helps.
Juan

Hi Hany,

We have the new Dell blade chassis (m1000e) and the predecessor with the 1855 and 1955 blade servers. I don't know if that chassis has the virtual CD option. Do you know ? I've read that you need VT support to get vsphere running, so with the 1855 blades that's not going to happen!

Thanks.
Juan
Hany Michael

Thanks Juan, glad you liked them. As per the CD/DVD support, it depends what kind of blade you are using, in HP & Dell I used the virtual CD, I just mounted the dvd iso file and done everything remotely from my laptop. In IBM HS2x blades I can do the same also, but I have the option of using the builtin CD/DVD drive on the BladeCenter chassis.
Juan

Hi Hany,

Good job with these vids. I have a question for you.
Do you know if there's a way for installing ESX 4.0 on a blade server with no DVD support?
Thanks.

Regards,
Juan
Hany Michael

Hi Tom,

Sounds like a hardware compatibility issue. I guess you’ll have to wait for the GA release in order to escalate this to VMware’s support.

Regards,
Tom

nice video, but I have a question, on the HDD choose can you tell me why I am not able to see any HDD ?
I use the ADAPTEC SCRI controller and SCSI HDD Seagate..

The VMWare server 3.5 run just fine on the same server where I am trying to install the ESX 4...
But as I told you I stop under the installation where I need to choose the HDD nothing is displayed on the list :(
I am not able to choose any HDD...

Any idea ? I have also tried to format the HDD via its controller... but no luck..

Thank You
Best regards
Tom
Michael Tsang

Perfect Video.

Thanks.
Gav Smythe

I'm loving the music. That was brilliant... looking forward to more