How to Setup VMware VSphere Lab in VMware Workstation

How to setup VMware vSphere Lab in VMware Workstation ? This e-book is destined to every VMware fan and/or IT professional and enthusiast. This Free E-book describes the setup of Portable Lab to run nested ESXi 5.1 servers with nested VMs, shared storage, virtual networking etc… This is no mean to be a perfect, without errors, guide. But it’s a guide which is available for Free, as is. And it is a detailed, step-by-step guide. There aren’t many around. I’ll try to update this e-book as the products will evolve. Almost everyone has one powerful machine, PC, at home to work with, but not everyone can afford to buy 2 whiteboxes or small servers PLUS a NAS box which does shared hosting. And then you still need 4th box to access all this.

While people run mostly their physical labs at home with whiteboxes, real servers, real NAS and/or SAN boxes, there is still place for a lab designed to run in VMware Workstation. An ultimate VMware vSphere lab running in VMware Workstation with nested ESXi servers and few cloned VMs. That’s quite a challenge to design it and built it. Sure, physical lab gets better performance, but portable lab is… portable. You can take it with you while traveling, while on the boat, or train.. -. There are several possibilities for the design, especially for “shared storage” where the nested VMs live (the second level nested VMs)…. I will try to save as much on the storage space here. There are many different ways on how to design that part also. To make it easier to build, not many guides are available which walks you step-by-step, especially when it comes to the network design and also to get the best available “tweaks” to save every single gigabit of storage, since this solution must obviously run on SSD storage. This SSD’s are still expensive so we will need to save every Megabyte on that.

Chapter: How to setup VMware vSphere Lab in VMware Workstation ?

You can see an XP virtual machine being protected by Fault Tolerance. This VM is running “inside” of a virtualized (nested) ESXi 5.1 host. You’ll be able to test vMotion and High Availability as well. Those are the enterprise class features of VMware vSphere.

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What do you need to get started? Not much, a PC (or laptop) with minimum 8 gigs of RAM. It’s the bare minimum, and it’s not a big deal, even for laptop users now, since 8 Gb kit costs around €40. I upgraded my new portable working gear recently with 8gigs of RAM recently – New Working (blogging) gear has arrived. And I’m using this laptop to write down this setup in this little e-book. Usually the laptop comes with Windows 7 as a system, which is fine. I highly recommend using a SSD drive where the VMs will be stored. If you have a laptop with classic 2.5’ 5400 RPM drive, you’ll need to upgrade that to a SSD otherwise it will be slow, very slow… you won’t regret. Since the SSD’s are still pricey, I’ll try to guide you with setups which consume least space possible on the SSD.

As a second you’ll need VMware Workstation 8 software. If you’re not vExpert or VCP (those people get this software usually Free of charge) you can download free trial or buy it from VMware Website here. Believe me, you won’t regret of this investment. The latest Workstation 8 has completely changed the way of working, since the new features permits to use sharing of VMs across your LAN, direct connection to ESX/ESXi hosts and many more. You can have a look at my article on the latest new features of VMware Workstation here - VMware Workstation 9 has been released. 30 Days Trial – Vmware Workstation 9 . You might be interested in Academic discounts. VMware Workstation 9 Academic – For Faculty Staff, Students and Teachers. Or you might want to check out my website where regularly I post the Discount Codes on Workstation and Fusion (MAC). You can find it at www.vladan.fr/coupons or a full category with latest blog posts www.vladan.fr/category/promo .

I suppose that you would use the VMware 60 days trial, since there is no VMware Tech Subscription Available. Not yet at this moment…. I suppose that you know your way, but for this guide is for everyone – the newbies included – so here are the URLs: VMware: VMware Trials – 60 days trial on VMware’s website. Microsoft: Microsoft Trials – there are 180 days trials there available for download. Sometimes you can find some coupon codes for MSDN subscription on http://blogs.msdn.com/ I will walks you through all the necessary steps in order to prepare your virtual network environment, your VMs in VMware Workstation, The shared storage…..so you’ll be able to test the enterprise features provided by VMware vSphere 5. Features like vMotion, High Availability (which permits automatic restart

Chapter: What do you need to get started?

You’ll need to download the latest vSphere 5.1 ISOs and also you’ll need Microsoft’s 2008R2SP1 ISO. Some client OS as well, XP or Win 7…..

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of VMs in case of physical host failure), Fault tolerance or DRS… all this is possible to configure run on this system. In order to be able to simulate this with nested hypervisors, a network design must be done in VMware workstation to permit this. The second challenge will be the storage space, since the SSDs are expensive and don’t provide enough storage. I will leverage the linked clones feature of VMware Workstation. This feature will allows us to create one base image and each new VM will be created as a linked clone from this base image. Like this only the delta of the base image will be used for the creation of those VMs.

The network design of vSphere lab in VMware Workstation. One of the biggest challenges for newcomers is the network design. In fact it’s not that difficult but when dealing with nested ESXi host, you must deal with nested networks as well. In this guide you will be able to learn – step by steps to setup all the networks necessary to activate and run the different VMware vSphere enterprise class features (vMotion, FT, HA…)

If you install just the VMware player, the Virtual network editor is not bundled…. The shortcut to the small exe file is the through the following path: "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmnetcfg.exe" or there is also an icon in the start menu. After starting the Virtual Network Editor, the default networks are present there. I know from my own experience, that it can be confusing when you just starting with virtualization and you start to find your way through the different layers. If you want to write down on a piece of paper the default networks, you can. So let’s add some networks. Click the ADD Network button and Add VMnet2 as a network. Setup the options as on the screenshot below.

Chapter: The network design of vSphere lab in VMware Workstation.

To start the network design we’ll be using the Virtual Network editor which is bundled with the VMware Workstation software. You can also use the trial of VMware Workstation, and then when the trial expires you can stick with VMware Player, which is free. Like this you can keep access to the Virtual Network Editor after the expiration.

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The networks in Excel spreadsheet.

There are several possibilities to design a network for ESXi hosts. The limitation of VMware Workstation is 10 vNICs, but don’t worry, we will not use all this as a NICs.. We’ll use 6 NICs, but that does not mean that this is the only possible design. There are designs for each different situations, so it’s really depends. I choose this setup to show you the major features of vSphere with least possible “hardware”….. Now, before we go further with the network setup, you might want to have a look at the chapter called Installation of Nested ESXi hosts. And then come back here.

Chapter: The network design of vSphere lab in VMware Workstation.

The solution is designed to use isolated networks. So all the VMs (the nested ESXi hypervizors, the vCenter VM and the DC VM will run in a “Sandbox”. This is because I don’t want to interfere with other VMs or services if my laptop is plugged-in to the LAN. You can easily override that by using the “Bridged” option. In that case all the VMs will be visible outside of your PC or Laptop

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Go and select the ESXi host where you want to add more NICs > Edit Virtual Machine settings.

Do that for both ESXi hosts. Then you can boot them up. In the next chapter we will create and install vCenter VM, create cluster and add both hosts into that cluster. Only then we can finalize the network configuration for those nested ESXi hosts. Here is the recap: Those are the virtual networks adapters added in VMware Workstation associated to VMnic virtual network cards in Nested ESXi hosts.

Chapter: The network design of vSphere lab in VMware Workstation.

Configure 6 NICs for that VM. Add one by one those virtual NIC cards to the nested ESXi host. Those virtual NIC cards configured here will appear in the t

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Preparation of Windows templates First when I usually install VMware Workstation on a new computer, I define the working directory. You can have several drives in your desktop/laptop PS and one of them is usually used to store the VMDK files which are the Virtual Disks files. In my laptop I do have only one SSD drive and I will specify the c:\VMs directory as my working directory.

This helps us save some time, since every time you’ll start an assistant and would like to create new VM, the default location for your VMs will be defined as is and not in My Document\MyVms as e default location.

In the radio button selection choose custom

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

Now we’ll start to create a template for Windows 2008R2SP1. I downloaded the iso of Win 2008R2 with the SP1 already slipstreamed in it.

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Choose to install the OS later, since we’ll need to personalize the virtual hardware of this VM first.

Note: When choosing between those different OSes, it permits afterwards to install the correct version of VMware Tools. The correct ISO will get mounted when the installation of VMware tools will be invoked. We choose Microsoft Windows and as a family the Windows Server 2008R2 x64.

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

On the next screen navigate to the Windows ISO image which you have downloaded from Microsoft’s website.

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Name it some convenient way…

Choose one CPU, you can change that later when working with linked clones.

Concerning the network, choose not to connect for now, since we’ll be able to choose the network Afterwards when we’ll be working with linked clones.

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

The same for memory. I accepted the default value. If you get a warning, just click cancel.

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Default accepted..

Concerning the disk capacity, we can stick with the default value. The thin provisioning will be used, with single file creation. The “Allocate all disk space now” option will not be selected. This option will use thin provisioned disk and so even when the Operating system will see 40 Gigs, the real size of the VMDK file will be just a little over 7 Gigs… but wait to see it by your own. Single file, otherwise we will have multiple files with 2 gigs in size.

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

iSCSI is the default value. It’s also the more performant, since IDE was usually used for older systems, like WinXP

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The disk file name has the name of the VM by default. No reason to change that. The default location is in

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

the same folder as the other files which are used by this VM. Now, click on the customize hardware button to have the possibility to personalize this Template.

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Here we can take off all this hardware, it’s not necessary for our purpose. Make this VM as “light” as possible.

Add a network adapter and connect it to VMnet5, which is our network which is isolated network.

Before you power ON the VM, don’t forget to go and verify that the ISO image of the Windows 2008R2SP1 is connected to the VM otherwise the installation process won’t start. (you’ll see that the VM will try to boot from network..

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

You should end up with non-running VM with this hardware:

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Next, you can power-On this VM by clicking the green triangle in the Top left corner. You should see the VM booting and showing you the Windows server 2008 default installation screen.

You can go ahead and choose a language, keyboard language and Time and currency format.

Next, accept the license of Microsoft and go ahead click next…

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

Click on the Install Now button and choose the Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (full installation). If you choose the Datacenter or Enterprise, it will work. You might have more features present in your VM, but the image might be larger than the Standard version. And our goal is to design this solution to run it on modest SSD drive which is often only with like 40 Gigs of space…

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Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

Choose the Custom (Advanced) installation….

Here you go… have a coffee now, because it will take some time to decompress and install the system.

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When installation is finished, at first prompt you’ll be asked to change your default password. Pick a strong password with at least one capital letter and some numbers. Then, if you mouse get stuck inside of the VM’s window use CRTL + Alt as a shortcut to get out of the window and free your mouse…

Note: You can launch the VMware tools installation process from the menu

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

Install VMware Tools and reboot the VM.

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Take the Typical option and reboot the VM after the VMware tools complete.

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

The installation of VMware Tools is necessary step since it will install all the necessary drivers for your VM (Display, network, hard drive…. Etc….)

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You can disconnect the ISO of Windows Server 2008R2 now. We will not need it any more. After the VM restarts, we’ll install some additional role components… But first, we’ll deactivate some annoying Internet Explorer Features…

Take only the sub component .NET Framework 3.5.1, since if you choose the whole feature you’ll get prompted to install IIS. Well, we don’t really need IIS and remember, we saving as much space as possible…

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

And then we can proceed with adding .NET component which we’ll be using later..

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Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

If we don’t install the latest updates from Microsoft, we can keep the base image with about 7 Gigs of size.

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Stop the VM and look at the size of the VMDK files…..

Do a sysprep and shut down the VM.

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

This is pretty good, since from now on we’ll use only delta files which will use as a base this VMDK file image. Now we only need to sysprep the VM and Turn it into Template.

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By doing a sysprep, the next time we will do a linked clone and start the clone, the VM get it’s new identifier, new NetBIOS name, etc etc.. And we’ll not have a trouble with dealing with double SIDs. Unique SIDs are required for domain controllers anyway. Now when the sysprep operation has finished, the VM has been automatically stopped. We need to create a template.

To make this template a real “Template” you need to check in the VM properties the “Enable Template Mode”

The template is now secured with a special protection. You can’t for example delete the VM by going to the menu VM > Manage > Delete from disk…….

Chapter: Preparation of Windows templates

Name the template to fit your needs. You can put the date of creation and your own comments if you need to…

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Creating of Domain Controller VM

Chapter: Creating of Domain Controller VM

This VM will be not only our domain controller, but will also do a DNS resolution for our small virtual lab…DNS resolution is a necessary.

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Chapter: Creating of Domain Controller VM

After reboot we’ll go and give to our VM Fixed IP first… We put our VM onto isolated network – Vmnet5. Give that VM the IP adress 10.10.2.4/24 (mask: 255.255.255.0). If not already the case, just go to the menu, choose VM > properties > select the network adapter and from the drop down menu choose VMnet2. Add DHCP role and create and activate a scope, so your VMs can get an IP address on tha internal isolated network. The DHCP will stay active only on the VMNET2 network.

Chapter: Creating of Domain Controller VM

Then, if you know your way on how to properly create a first AD server, just skip to another chapter. For anybody else just read on… We need to rename this machine and start the dcpromo. First let’s rename this machine to DC. Right click on Computer > Properties > Advanced system settings > Advanced TAB

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The AD config is straightforward. I’m not commenting much those steps since you certainly done that thousand times…. -

Chapter: Creating of Domain Controller VM

Like this the VM won’t go outside of the isolated network… and won’t interfere with any real servers on the LAN. The next step would be to promote this VM to do our domain controller, DNS and DHCP server.

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Chapter: Creating of Domain Controller VM

Look at the size of the size of the linked-clone VM….. - 746Mb only – that’s the power of linked clones. It uses the base image and creates only the deltas which are different…. The deltas represent all the configuration changes and AD, DNS, DHCP roles that we added…. I think that I don’t have to mention that this configuration is completely unsupported to run in production environments. If something goes wrong to the base template image, all your linked-clones will dies….because the’re ….. linked -.

Installation of Nested ESXi hosts The installation of nested ESXi hosts inside of VMware Workstation is a snap now. The evolution of VMware Workstation since the version 7 does magic. There is no more necessary to modify the VMX files (config files). The option of installing ESX/ESXi host came out directly when starting the new VM assistant. The model of VM is already there.

A virtual lab is also very flexible and can be easily be suspended while running in VMware Workstation. The only condition is to have speedy hard drive. And while we’re here, if you’re planning to run some lab on a desktop, no need to setup the SSD drive as a bootable drive, since the OS files consumes quite a lot of space. I would recommend placing the SSD drive as a secondary drive. So let’s go ahead and let’s get started with the installation. When choosing the new VM, select the Hardware 8 version, one single hard drive (default 40 gigs is fine – it will be thin provisioned). Accept the default SCSI controller, and before powering On the VM configure the virtual hardware as on the screenshot below. Add 2 virtual NIC cards with the VMnet5 network as a connection. As for the number of CPUs, it depends on your CPU type. If your CPU has 2 or 4 cores, you’ll configure this setting accordingly.

Chapter: Installation of Nested ESXi hosts

You can watch a quick video I created: http://www.vladan.fr/installation-of-vmware-esxi-5-inside-ofvmware-workstation-8/

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Chapter: Installation of Nested ESXi hosts

Then run the ESXi 5 installer. You’ll be presented with screenshots like this one.

The Virtual Hard disk drive…..

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Then, choose the keyboard, root password…

Hit the Enter to kick the installation process…

After the reboot, hit F2 and log into the console. You’ll see screen like this.

Chapter: Installation of Nested ESXi hosts

The installation is fast. In few minuts you’ll have the confirmation screen…Hit Enter to reboot.

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We need to configure the IP address, hostname, DNS settings here…

Let’s configure the DNS information too…

Chapter: Installation of Nested ESXi hosts

You can attach the first 2 NIC cards..

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Restart the management network. Hit Yes.

As I said, the installation and configuration of ESXi host is really fast… -. Now, you can do the second one. ESXi5-02. When finished, power down both VMs and go to the hardware configuration and Add some more NICs. We’ll need it in the chapter called Network Design of Nested ESXi servers…

The vCenter VM Update: you can also use the vCenter Server 5.1 linux appliance for your vCenter (easy setup - faster deployment). I’m including the setup at the end of this book as a special chapter.

Note: You have another option for the Windows VMs. There is still the possibility to build the vCenter VM on a Windows 2003 x64 VM which consumes less resources….. We will use this VM not only for vCenter services but this VM will also assure other services that we will need, like: -

vCenter SQL express database service (we could also deploy SQL server, but it means another VM which needs storage and memory to run). Since we’ll only run 2 ESXi hosts, and few VMs.

Chapter: The vCenter VM

The vCenter VM will run several services. We must grant more memory to this VM. I think that 2 gigs will be good to start with as the bare minimum, but we’ll see if it’s enough or not.

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the “shared storage” service. We will use this vCenter server VM as an iSCSI target where we will run our VMs. Like this we don’t need another VM which will consume memory and storage space on our SSD drive which is very limited in space.

Ok, let’s move on with the setup of this VM. First, we’ll do another linked clone, this time for vCenter.

Go to menu VM > Manage > Clone > Existing Snapshot > and choose linked clone…

Choose a convenient name. In my case = vCenter The clone process is fast....- It’s because it’s not full copy, but the VM is linked to the master template image. Configure the vCenter VM with fixed IP address as seen in the screenshot. IP address: 10.10.2.3/24 This VM will be joined to the Active Directory lab.local as Member Server. I’m not detailing the steps here since I suppose that you know how to do it.

Chapter: The vCenter VM

Go to the menu VM > Settings > and attach the vCenter Installation ISO which you downloaded from VMware Website as a 60 days trial together with the ESXi Installation ISOs.

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You can now start the installation process of vCenter. The vCenter installation will install a SQL express 2008 as a database. As I outlined before, a small installations can use the SQL express Database server from Microsoft. The database is limited to 4 gigs of data and so VMware recommends using this DB with maximum of 5 physical hosts. This is sufficient for our small lab and for many SMB installations too. VMware vSphere Essentials and Essentials Plus kits they provide special licensing for vCenter. It’s the vCenter Edition oriented for SMBs and it’s also called vCenter Server Essentials which can manage up to 3 physical hosts.

Hit the install button to start the installation process.

Chapter: The vCenter VM

Start the autorun.exe if it does not start automatically and choose the vCenter from the menu…

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Here you go. You just installed vCenter.

Chapter: The vCenter VM

Accept the certificate warning and …

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Do a right click and create New Datacenter.

Chapter: The vCenter VM

Then create New Cluster

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Add new host…

Then accept the certificate warning…

If you experiencing problems here make sure that you have both forward and reverse zones properly created on your DNS server and in both zones you got the records populated as well. If not, create those records.

Chapter: The vCenter VM

Do the same for the second host… You should ping both hosts by FQDN as well, not only by IP address.

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Shared Storage In order to implement most of the cool features from VMware vSphere, like vMotion, HA, the VMs must “live” on shared storage. If you’re new to virtualization I should explain a bit. Shared storage is basically datastore visible from every host of your cluster. When you install a new VM, the destination space of that VM is that shared storage. The VM’s hard disk VMDK files are stored there, together with VMX (conf files) and Swap files as well. Every single host must see that shared storage in order to implement vMotion or HA. To implement shared storage in a small lab like the one I’m describing, there is several choices. You can download and configure Openfiler or FreeNAS, which both provides Virtual Appliances and are quite “lightweight”, but this, would Add another VM which consume memory and disk space in my small virtual “infrastructure”. So the option I’m taking is that I will implement the shared storage by my vCenter VM (yes that’s another role). We will use the vCenter VM as an iSCSI target with free edition of Starwind iSCSI SAN. You can download it from Starwindsoftware.com: http://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-free

Ok, Let’s move on. First, power down the vCenter VM and Add second vNIC which will be configured with VMnet2 (our iSCSI network). The vCenter VM should have 2 vNICs.

First, we will add additional disk drive to this VM.

Chapter: Shared Storage

It’s very easy to install and setup to implement the shared storage. I’ll first add a second virtual hard drive and another vNIC for storage network, to my vCenter VM. Like this, I keep the number of VMs relatively low because my 8Gigs of RAM in my laptop will get consumed very fast.

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Right click the vCenter VM, you go to the settings > add new hard drive. Choose 10 gigs, but this time choose allocate the disk space now. We might be able to get better performance with thick disk.

Chapter: Shared Storage

Start the VM. The newly added disk must be initialized and formatted in the storage snap-in.

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That’s it concerning the volume. Now we’ll need to add another NIC card to the vCenter VM. This vNIC will be used for the storage network. Configure this network card with this IP address: 10.10.3.1/24 (mask: 255.255.255.0)

Connect to your host via your IP address or via FQDN. And install the free license which you got when you downloaded the product.

Chapter: Shared Storage

Next, install Starwind iSCSI SAN, do a full installation.

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Add new starwind Server

Chapter: Shared Storage

Then connect to the server by double clicking the vCenter.lab.local

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Add new device..

Don’t forget to check the Allow multiple concurrent iSCSI connections (clustering), otherwise you’ll be able to connect only with One single ESX/ESXi host…. -. Name the target alias.

If you do have more space, you would probably want to add more space. The 10 Gigs is bare minimum though since if you want to test VMs running FT, you’ll have to use eagezerothick disks to do so in VMware vSphere. And so the disk is obviously not thin provisioned. The VMDK file which will lay on that shared datastore will

Chapter: Shared Storage

When I look at the space we have on the drive, I can see that the maximum img file I can create is 9.9Gigs, because in VMware Workstation I chose to only add 10Giga hard drive.

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take the entire place that the VM will require multiplied by 2, since when VM is protected by FT, there are actually 2 VMs running…. One principal and one secondary VM following the principal one with the vLockstep technology… But I think you can find plenty of information about FT all around the Internet. I have also done a blog post about it if you want to look here: http://www.vladan.fr/troubleshooting-fault-tolerance-in-vsphere/ http://www.vladan.fr/fault-tolerance-vmware-and-marathontechnologies/

And that’s what I choosed here.

Chapter: Shared Storage

That’s is it for Starwind. The target is now running.

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Start both vESXi 5 servers now (if not already running), open your vSphere client and connect to vCenter. Go to the storage adapters and Add software iSCSI adapter (in vSphere 5 it’s not present by default).

You’ll see the vmhba33 appear as on the image below…

Now, right click the iSCSI software adapter and choose properties. Add an iSCSI server address.

For now do not rescan, if prompted. First we’ll add our 2 new network adapters to the iSCSI VMkernel port. Go and select one of the hosts in vSphere, and then select Configuration > Networking > add networking > VMkernel

Chapter: Shared Storage

The next step you should Add new VMkernel port group which will be used for the iSCSI storage.

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Select the radio button and check both checkboxes to Add 2 NICs at the same time when creating new vSwitch with the iSCSI vmkernel port group.

Configure the IP address as this (don’t change the VMkernel default gateway):

Chapter: Shared Storage

Put a name for this Port Group. For example iSCSI1.

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Now add a second VMkernel – ISCSI2, configure 10.10.3.12 as an IP address. As for the second ESXi host, I’ll use the 10.10.3.21 for ISCSI1 and 10.10.3.22 for ISCSI2.

You should end up with the vSwith1 configured like this:

Then, do the same (the other way around) for the iSCSI2. You should end up with the ISCSI2 being setup as on the image below.

Chapter: Shared Storage

Now, click on the vSwitch properties and double click iSCSI1 port group and configure the NICs as on the image below.

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Go to the configuration > iSCSI > Add > and choose one NIC card present in the list.

Chapter: Shared Storage

Then, one after another add both NICs – vmnic2 and vmnic3

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Like this both vNICs are binded to the VMkernel port group. Validate, and rescan. Next you’ll have to check if the firewall ports are opened for the iSCSI connection. Go to Configuration > Security profile > Properties

Chapter: Shared Storage

Then, check the checkbox for software iSCSI client….

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Then, rescan the iSCSI adapter. You should see the paths to the iSCSI target like this one…

Now, go to storage > add storage – to add and create VMFS volume.

Chapter: Shared Storage

Choose the fiesystem… name and format the datastore

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Network design of nested ESXi hosts – part 2 There might be certainly different network design, for 4,6, 8 or … 16 NICs!!!!! But in our case we’ll stick what we already did. First, we’ll remove the VM network. Choose one esxi host. In my case I took the ESXi5-02.lab.local as a host.

Chapter: Network design of nested ESXi hosts – part 2

And here you goes… we have a shared storage..--. New Datastore.

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Assign this IP address to this VMkernel Port.

Chapter: Network design of nested ESXi hosts – part 2

And add VMkernel port which we’ll use for vMotion.

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Now, you should see this as a network configuration. Go ahead and click properties.

Do the same for vMotion VMkernel portgroup, but in the NIC teaming tab move the VMNiC0 as standby this time. Next, let’s create a FT network. Create a new vSphere Standard switch and Add vmnic4 as “physical” NIC.

Chapter: Network design of nested ESXi hosts – part 2

Then click on the properties > and Management Network > Edit > NIC Teaming TAB. Check the “override switch failover order” and move VMNic1 as Standby.

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Check the Fault Tolerance checkbox and put a network label

Again, assign an IP address to the VMkernel iP stack here. Since I’m configuring the ESXi-02.lab.local host, I put 10.10.4.1 as an IP address.

replay.allowBTOnly = true replay.allowFT = true replay.supported = true

Chapter: Network design of nested ESXi hosts – part 2

Now, to be able to use Fault Tolerance in this “Nested and totally unsupported “environment, we’ll have to set some advanced configuration parameters. You will have to do it at the VM level. It means that if you have created an XP VM then you’ll have to go to the advanced settings and add row and add those values.

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One last step is to add VM network. A separate network VM where we can put our VMs.

So the final picture should look like this:

Chapter: Network design of nested ESXi hosts – part 2

Put a network label.

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This ends up our setup of nested ESXi 5 hypervisor inside of VMware Workstation.

A bonus chapter(s) …? Installation of VMware vCenter Server Linux Appliance Note that if you use this option (and not using the classic vCenter on Windows VM) you’ll need another VM which will serve you a shared Storage. You can follow my guide then for Openfiler or Freenas setup with ESXi hosts:

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How-to configure Openfiler iSCSI Storage for use with VMware ESX (even if based on ESX, the principle stays valid). How-to configure Freenas 8 for iSCSI and connect to ESX(i)

VMware vCenter Server Linux appliance (vCSA) is a Suse Linux Enterprise Server pre-packaged virtual appliance, which enables you to setup very easily vCenter server for up to 5 physical hosts. What’s the principal limitations of vCSA 5.1 right now? Features that aren’t currently supported: o o o o o

Linked mode SQL Server as an external database Max of 5 ESXi hosts / 50 VMs supported on the embedded DB. Security Support Provider Interface (SSPI) VMware Update Manager can’t be installed in the vCSA, but you can install it in an additional Windows-based VM or physical server.

The vCSA comes up automatically prepackaged and deploys very fast, with those components:

Chapter: A bonus chapter(s) …?

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vCenter Single Sign On (SSO) Inventory Service vSphere Web Client (server part) vSphere Auto Deploy Syslog Collector ESXi Dump Collector

The deployment of this Linux based vCSA is pretty easy. No need to be Linux guru, but just following this small how-to you should be able to achieve the installation. You’ll need the login/password information: root as a login and VMware as a default password. Otherwise the product can be downloaded as a single file with OVA extension OR, multiple file with OVF plus VMDK virtual disk files. As usually, you would probably want to use the provided download link via a download manager, which works through Java based console, but optimizes the download speed and can resume broken transfers.

Before starting the installation, make sure that you put yourself to the VMNet2 network… to receive the DHCP address from the DC we have setup in previous chapters. Otherwise you’ll get another address from your “physical network” (probably is the router who distributes DHCP leases on your home network, right?).

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Keeps the installation rolling and you should see this blue screen with instructions.

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Open your web browser and point the Use the “Set Custom configuration” radio button.

Use the embedded DB option:

Pass the next screen and you should see a page like this, where you can fill in you AD credentials.

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If you’re running into a problem with the AD configuration, don’t worry. You can always do it later…

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How to run Microsoft Hyper-V with nested VMs inside of VMware Workstation 9. As you probably know, it's possible to virtualize ESXi 4/5 within VMware Workstation and run 3 levels deep "inception" infrastructure. And now you can also test other hypervisors... Like Hyper-V.. -:). And run VM in VM....

I installed Win Server 2008 Standard and added the Hyper-V role. You have to modify the settings in the Hyper-V VM, in order to create and install a VM inside of Hyper-V. VM > Settings > Processors - check the "Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI" .

Chapter: How to run Microsoft Hyper-V with nested VMs inside of VMware Workstation 9.

In the image below you can see that I'm running Hyper-V and inside I'm running W7 system. How it's done...?

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And also by modifying the VMX configuration file of the Hyper-V VM by adding this line:

This is just for testing purposes...

Independent Consultant and blogger. Vladan runs his website at www.vladan.fr , which at first started as a simple bookmarking site, but very fast found itself many readers and supporters. The website is updated daily so you can always be sure to read the latest news and how-to’s articles and tips. Vladan is a VCP4, VCP 5, vExpert 2009-2011. Read more about Vladan here: www.vladan.fr/about www.vladan.fr/twitter - @vladan www.vladan.fr/feed - stay tuned via RSS www.vladan.fr/subscribe- weekly E-mail with latest news. www.vladan.fr/linkedin - connect via Linked IN

Chapter: How to run Microsoft Hyper-V with nested VMs inside of VMware Workstation 9.

hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE"

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