Free vSphere 5 goodies for vGeeks – Cloud Contest

igibbs@host:/images$ vmware-vdiskmanager -c -t 0 -a ide -s 236GB fs1-images.vmdk
Creating disk '/images/fs1-images.vmdk'
Failed to create disk: The file is too big for the filesystem (0xc00000015).

Err, no it’s not. The maximum file size for ext3 and ext4 is 16TB, for ext4 will eventually be 1,048,576TB (or 1EB). To my knowledge, that’s not block size-dependent like VMFS is. Eventually it turned out that I could create a pre-allocated disk (-t 2) of 236GB but not a sparse disk (-t 0) of 236GB:

igibbs@host:/images$ vmware-vdiskmanager -c -t 2 -a ide -s 236GB fs1-images.vmdk
Creating disk 'fs1-images.vmdk'
Create: 0% done.

Hope this helps someone. I presume it’s caused by Workstation not recognising ext4 properly.

I couldn’t find a way of  pre-adjusting the memory requirements but there’s a way to change this behavior and to downsize the memory when the installation has finished. Keep in mind this is, as far as I know, not supported… it’s only to be used to run ESX within VMware Workstation for your demo / test environment. I personally use it for running 2 ESX servers and vCenter within VMware Workstation on my 4GB laptop. (That’s what I actually use to create screenshots and prepare blog articles.)

ESX:

1. Install vSphere(ESX) with at least 2 GB memory
2. Login to the Service Console and type the following:

   vi /etc/vmware/init/init.d/00.vmnix

3. Change the following line to the desired value:

   RequiredMemory=2064384

4. Shutdown the virtual machine and change the VMs memory and boot it up!

Thanks Mark for the comment on ESXi:

1. Install vSphere(ESXi) with at least 2 GB memory
2. Login to the console via the “unsupported” method.
3. Edit the file /etc/vmware/esx.conf and add the following line:

   /vmkernel/minMemoryCheck = “false”

4. Save the file and shutdown ESXi, change the memory and boot it up!

Don’t use any other editor than “vi”, there are multiple reports of nano wrecking the layout of the file which leads to an unrecoverable error during booting.

What’s new:

Support for New Guest Operating Systems
VMware provides support for the following operating systems for Workstation 6.5.2:

• Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2
• Asianux Server 3.0 Service Pack 1
• OpenSUSE 11.1
• Ubuntu 8.10
• Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

VMware provides experimental support to the following operating systems for Workstation:

• Fedora 11
• FreeBSD 7.1
• Mandriva Linux 2009
• Microsoft Windows 7
• Novell SLE11.0
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8
• Sun Solaris 10 Update 6
• Ubuntu 9.04

Support for Intel Microarchitecture (Nehalem)
VMware provides support for Nehalem processors (Intel Microarchitecture) from this release.

Of course there are also a whole bunch of resolved issues. You can read all about it here.

Fixing your broken installation is fairly easy:

To use this patch, download it from the attachment, gunzip it, then go to your /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source directory. Untar all of the files. Apply the patch with “patch -p1″. After the patch has applied, re-tar all the files. Then, run “vmware-modconfig –console –install-all” again, under Linux 2.6.29, and it should now work.

Go to the VMTN Forums and download the patch if you are having trouble getting the VMware Workstation kernel modules compiled correctly!

You didn’t pay attention during Cyber Monday and forgot to order your copy of VMware Fusion and/or VMware Workstation? Well here’s your chance to pick it up with a 50% discount, keep in mind that there are only a few days left to pick it up with this holiday reduction coupon!

This is a special discount for “Friends and Family” from VMware. In order to receive the reduction coupon just drop me an email on duncan [@] yellow-bricks.com, or send me a Direct Message on Twitter. And if your not on Twitter by now, start checking it out.

This is a special discount for “Friends and Family” from VMware. In order to receive the reduction coupon you’ll need to add me on twitter and send me a direct message, or send me a pm on the VMTN Forums.

Contact me, go to the store and pick up Fusion or Workstation, 50% off even your wife would agree that this is money well spent.

1. Create Virtual Machine, Custom
2. WS 6.5 Compatibility
3. Linux Kernel, other
4. Number of processors: 2
5. Memory: 1024
6. Bridged Networking (change to team later on)
7. LSI Logic
8. New disc, SCSI
9. 6GB, pre-allocated, single file
10. Customize hardware, remove: soundcard, usb, floppy
    set execution mode to: Intel VT-x
11. Edit .vmx and add the following:
    ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "true"
12. Install ESX
13. Add VM to Team and select “LAN 1″ for networking(keep the test vm’s completely isolated)

xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true

This was added manually so I could still use key combo’s like “ctrl-alt-ins”. But on the machine that does have a working Unity mode I implemented the second option described in this blog post.

So I decided to also implement this on my 64bit Ubuntu 8.10 workstation. After restarting VMware workstation this was the result:

Windows Event Viewer running on Ubuntu 8.10 in Unity mode…

And still a few hours left on this deal, so be sure to either pick up Fusion and/or Workstation while you still can.

Thanks to everyone using these links! My kids can have a decent dinner again