Installing vSphere in VMware Workstation

If you are new to VMware vSphere you are probably wondering how to practice or study those technologies within budget. The answer is you can install vSphere in VMware Workstation 7 or 8 or 9. Installing vSphere in a VMware workstation is easy. Before installing the ESXi server you should understand the basic difference between vSphere components so that you won’t have any confusion. ESXi server is a type one hypervisor. This means that the ESXi server, itself is an operating system. It doesn’t need any other host operating system to operate. ESXi server is installed on a physical machine (Server) and is managed via the vSphere client. It’s important to understand the minimum hardware requirements for installing an ESXi server.

Installing vSphere in VMware Workstation

Download and install VMware Workstation and VMware vSphere. You should have basic knowledge of VMware Workstation like creating virtual machines, creating teams, creating LAN connections, and so on. Open the VMware workstation application from the desktop, click File in File Menu and select New Virtual Machine. A new wizard pops up.

Choose Custom (advanced) and click the Next button. Choose the hardware compatibility as Workstation 9.0 and click the Next button.

Choose the option Installer disc image file (iso) and browse the location of the ESXi installer ISO image. Now click Next. Now type the name for a virtual machine, and click Next.

Choose the number of physical processors and core processors. Then click the Next button. Give the amount of RAM.

Here, select the amount of RAM you want to give to this virtual machine. In virtualization, the more memory, the better it is. I am giving 6GB of memory. Now click Next. Choose the Network Type.

I will choose NAT since I will be using the internet from the virtual machine. Now click the Next button. Here, you can select the bridged networking option if you want the ESXi server to communicate with the physical network directly. In select I/O Controller dialog box, choose the default SCSI controller and click the Next button.

In the select a disk dialog box, choose to create a new virtual disk and click the Next button. In the disk type box, choose SCSI and click the Next button.

In Specify Disk Capacity box, give the disk size. I am giving 400GB. Then click the Next button. In Specify Disk File box, browse the location to store the disk file and click the Next button. Review your configuration and click finish. The machine will power on and loads the installer file automatically. After the loading completes a box appears,

Press Enter button and press the F11 key to accept the EULA agreement.

It will now ask for a disk to install the server. Our disk is highlighted. Press Enter to continue. Then it will ask for your keyboard layout. Choose the option you prefer and press Enter. Then it will ask to enter the root password. Enter the password for a root user account and press Enter.

It will now ask for confirmation for installing the server. Press F11 to start the installation. Now the installation will start.

It will show the progress of the installation. After installation completes it will ask you to reboot the device.

Hit Enter to reboot the device. After the reboot, you will see the following screen.

You can now make some basic changes from this GUI Interface of the ESXi server or you can use the vSphere client to get access to the device to manage from the client machine.