I’m working on a series of blog entries, Getting Started With Virtualization (Using VMware ESXi), but before I dig into the background and the details, I wanted to give you something to get yourself started. I know that you, as a sysadmin, want to try before you read instead of after. To help, I’m writing this quickstart first.

Get ESXi Install ESXi Configure ESXi Set up VMs

(compliments of vmetc.com)

Double click on VMs and Templates at the top and you should be taken to a screen that looks much more like this:

(Image courtesy of Tech Target)

…only you won’t have any VMs listed on the left. So you’ve got to add some.

Before you do that, though, it helps to have an installation source, like a CD image. Assuming you’ve already got your favorite ISO handy, go pick up a copy of Veeam FastSCP, and use it to put the ISO onto the ESXi server.

Now you’re ready to create a new server, so right click on the server’s IP in the top left corner and follow the instructions for making a new VM. It’ll ask all of the details about the software you’re going to install (and don’t lie — it uses these selections to specify virtual devices and settings assigned to the resulting VM), then it’ll finish, leaving your VM created, but powered off.

Before you go and power it on, click on the machine, then on the “Configuration” tab. Under storage, you can assign an ISO file to the VM’s CD-ROM. Give it the ISO that you transferred over using FastSCP, then right click on the machine and hit “Start”.

There will be a little icon in the bar at the top that looks like a monitor with an arrow pointing out of it. Clicking this button launches the remote console in a pop-out window. Use this to configure the VM.

Inside the VM, install the OS like you normally would. Once you click in the console window, you’ll notice that it eats your mouse pointer and keyboard. To release it, hit ctrl-alt at the same time.

After installing the OS, you’ll need to reboot the VM. After it comes back up, take the time to install VMware Tools by clicking the VM menu in the console screen, going to Guest, then clicking “Install/Upgrade VMware Tools”. This enables you to do useful things like pause the VM, as well as not have the mouse cursor be trapped in a GUI environment on the guest.

This should be enough to get you playing with VMware this weekend. Next week I’ll work on getting some entries out that explain some of the backend things, and show some more useful features that are possible when you start putting vSphere in production environments.

Until then, good luck and have fun!