VMWare VDI the way forward

VMWare has taken the market with its server virtualisation software and now it plans to do the same with its desktop virtualisation technology.

This video shows how you can deply 100 desktops in 13 mins and only use 10GB of diskspace using Vmware VDI.  The network storage device is NetApps with the use of Data De-Duplication.

Data de-duplication is a storage technology which eliminates duplicate and therefore redundant data within a storage array. In this example, instead of having a 100 copies of the same operating system files, de-duplication would create a symbolic link to each block that contains the files.

Create a bootable ESX 3i on a usb stick

The difference between VMWare ESX 3.5 and 3.5i is that 3.5i does not come with the service console making it on 32mb in size.  This means you could have it running on a USB stick and below are the instructions on how to do it.

1. Download ESX Server 3i Installable ISO
2. Extract INSTALL.TGZ from the root directory of the ISO image using an IZArc
3. Extract /usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd.bz2 from INSTALL.TGZ using IZArc
4. Extract VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd from VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd.bz2 using IZArc
5. Attach the USB flash drive and make sure you no longer need the data on it
6. Use WinImage to transfer VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd to the USB flash drive
   1. Disk->Restore Virtual Hard Disk image on physical drive
   2. Select the USB flash drive (Warning: If you select the wrong disk you will lose data!)
   3. Select the image file VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-67921.i386.dd
   4. Confirm the warning message
   5. Wait for the transfer to complete
7. Unplug the USB flash drive (Warning: If you forget to unplug the flash drive from the PC you might lose the data on your hard drives the next time you boot!)
8. Attach the USB flash drive to the machine you want to boot (Warning: If ESX Server 3i recognizes local drives, you might lose the data on it, so make sure you don´t need it anymore or unplug all hard drives!)
9. Turn the machine on and make sure the USB flash drive is selected as boot device
10. Watch ESX Server 3i boot
11. Configure

Partitioning VMWare ESX Server 3.5 during installation

There are many ways to partition ESX during installing. ESX has its own default configuration if you are not familiar with partitioning or you can edit the configuration yourself.

Here is a recommended partitioning scheme for ESX newbies.

NEW PARTITIONING SCHEME

Remember this is only a recommendation and the partitioning scheme will be different depending on specific needs.