ESXi: how to install virtual machine using VMware vSphere Client

In earliest post, I demoed How to install VMware ESXi 5.1 and vSphere Client.
This articles will show how to create and virtual machine and install centos as guest OS on ESXi host.

1. Login to VMware vSphere Client

2. Click "File -> New -> Virtual Machine .." or press ctrl-N.

3. Choose Typical configuration.

4. Specify a name for our virtual machine, here I put "vmcentos".

5.  Choose guest OS and version, I am installing centos, so choose "Linux" and "CentOS 4/5/6 (32bit)"

6. Create a disk, I am installing Centos minimal, 5G should be more than enough, leave the other option unchanged.

7. Review VM configurations before finishing, attach CD/DVD to the virtual machine. Earlier I have copied CentOS-6.3-i386-minimal.iso into ESXi using winscp, so I just attach the iso file. Under "device status" remember to check "connect at power on" , otherwise VM cannot boot up properly in step 9.

 



8. Open VM console: "Inventory -> Virtual Machine -> Open Console"

9. Press green button to boot up VM, alternatively you can click "Inventory -> Virtual Machine -> Power -> Power On" .

10. Once we see the CentOS  installation page, the following steps should be no difference from installing a physical machine.

How to install VMware ESXi 5.1 and vSphere client

Unlike VMware work station, Virtualbox, ESXi is a bare-metal hyper-visor, which means you don't need an operating system before you can install ESXi.

This blog article shows how I installed ESXi 5.1. The installation process is quite straight forward, and is quite similar to typical Linux installation.

There is no spare physical computer for me to test the installation, so I created a VM in my Virtualbox, from Virtualbox I installed ESXi.

1. First we need to download ESXi from VMware website, the one I downloaded is: VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.1.0-799733.x86_64.iso

2. Start machine with the iso downloaded in step 1.

3. After ESXi installer loaded some stuffs, we are greeted with this welcome screen and End User License Agreement (EULA).

 4.  Select the disk to install ESXi.

 5. Choose keyboard layout

6. Set root password

7. Installation started.

8. Installation completed.

9. Hit Enter to reboot ESXi, after rebooting, we are given this screen.

10. Open web browser, key in the URL given in step 9. Click "Download vSpere Client" to install vSphere Client on our windows machine.

11.  Launch vSpere Client, key in the IP adress, username, and password.

12. After logging in, a message popup displaying "Your evaluation license will expire in 60 days", for the time being just ignore it first.
We can create or manage VMs on ESXi remotely now!

13. Once we login vSphere Client, we can create and manage our virtual machines. In http://linuxscripter.blogspot.sg/2013/04/esxi-how-to-install-virtual-machine.html, I will demo how to create VM and install guest OS.