How to Setup VMware Infrastructure using VMware Workstation?

Hi Friends,

This is all for you and this is a wonderful experience in my practical environment. In this post i want to discuss about how to setup an enterprise level VMware Infrastructure using VMware Workstation Application. Amazing isn’t it ? Come on with me, we will be going to setup our first Virtual Environment on our Laptop/Desktop.

Minimum Requirements

• A Standard Laptop/Desktop with Reasonable Resources.
• Virtualization Support enabled Processors.
• 32bit/64bit Architecture for Virtual Center 2.5 and vSphere 4.0 respectively.
• Trial version of Virtual Infrastructure Package (Do not use cracked versions).
• Trial version of ESX Server and VMware Workstation Software's (Do not use cracked versions).
• Openfiler ISO image for iSCSI setup.

So many things right, but if you want to practice you have to download all these things :).

Installation Steps:

Make sure Virtualization Support for the Processor is enabled in the BIOS.

Install the VMware Workstation Application (Version 5/6/7 required) on your Windows XP/Vista/7.

Create Virtual Machine using VMware Workstation 5 as the Options, it supports for ESX Server 3.5. Watch this video to know how to install ESX server on VMware Workstation.

Download the required images of ESX Server and Virtual Center from the following link

Click here

Install ESX Server inside VMware Workstation 

This ESX Server is assigned with an ip address from 192.168.x.x range. Make sure all the machines are in the same range (ESX Server, Open filer and Your Laptop/Desktop).

Then Create another Virtual Machine to install Open filer operating system on it. Open filer is an open source iSCSI SAN software which enables you to implement SAN.

Download the Openfiler(x86) image from the following link.

Click here

Please watch the below videos to configure Openfiles for ESX Server.

Once this virtual machine is installed, download Virtual Center software from the above link. 

And its a straight forward installation and i already posted about how to install Virtual center. Please see the below links.

Now lets see how to connect these three things together

• VC is installed on your machine which has an ip address for example 192.168.1.1
• ESX server is installed inside VMware workstation which has an ip address of 192.168.1.2
• Open filer is a virtual machine which has an ip address of 192.168.1.3
• Try to ping these 2 ip’s from your machine while they were powered on.
• Open VI client from your desktop connect to the ESX server ip address using the IP assigned to it. Use root credentials to login. In this case you are managing a single ESX server.
• If you want to connect to VC, type in the ip of your machine. Add the ESX Server to the VC.
• Configure the storage using the Storage option in the Configuration Tab (Everything shown in the Videos, please watch completely).
• After configuring the storage, create a virtual machine on the ESX Server. That's it.