vSphere - 34

I bought myself a 100 € Samsung 500 Gigabyte SATA disk and hooked it up to my workstation. On the configuration tab in the VI Client I selected the Storage option and created a VMFS.  I immediately received a failure message stating that “The response is not well- formed XML�?. There was still a format task running so I waited for a half hour before I restarted the VI Client. On the Storage Adapters configuration page I discovered my newly build VMFS. I made some screen dumps during this process.

When I tried to create my first VM on an ESX 3i Server, I realized that I needed to put an ISO on my newly build VMFS. The transfer of ISO’s with FastSCP or WinSCP doesn’t work anymore because there’s no Service Console in ESX 3i. But how do I transfer an ISO to my storage ? Well you can use the Datastore Browser to upload a file from the VI Client machine to a datastore in the VI Client inventory.

To upload a file:

1. Right-click on the destination datastore, and choose Browse Datastore.  The Datastore Browser dialog box is displayed.
    
2. Browse to the location to which you want to upload the file.
3. Click the Upload icon in the Datastore Browser toolbar. The Upload Items dialog box is displayed.
4. Navigate to and select the item you want to upload.
5. Click Upload.  A progress indicator displays the progress of the upload.

Well after the update I experienced my first purple screen of death. When I pressed the escape button I started an interactive session with the VMKDBG AKA the kernel debugger. I could see the logs and reboot the ESX 3i server. After another restart the server presented the new build number 54662.

Before......                                     After.......
                     
                 

Just out of curiosity I double clicked the VMware Update Service icon and before I knew it, I was downloading and installing bug fixes into the Firmware of my ESX 3i Server. The VI Client and the tools component (whatever that may be)  were also automatically updated. I took around 45 minutes and I had to restart my ESX 3i Server. I made some screenshots during the process. You can even schedule the  Update Service.





 

David Davis over at HappyRouter.com created a 16 minute training video that steps you trough the installation of VMware ESX Server 3i Beta in Workstation.  Now, you can learn how to virtualize it for testing and demo purposes by running VMware ESX Server 3i Beta on your existing PC OS. Take a look!

Scott Surovich created a 3i boot from disk how to. This document covers how to get the 3i USB memory stick image to a hard drive and it boots from the HD.  It still needs the memory stick for ONE check the boot does for the USB Boot partition - but the rest is all HD loaded.  This allows servers that DO NOT boot from USB devices to use the 3i Beta. He hopes to get that check pulled so you can boot 100% from a HD.