VMware Server 2 on Ubuntu

I am fairly new to the virtualisation area of computing and have been playing with VMware Workstation on and off for just over 3 years now. Virtualisation is an easy way to try out a new operating system, or to set up a network of computers for research and development purposes without the expense of buying additional hardware.

There are different vendors that supply virtualisation software for use in different operating systems or dedicated OS’s for the task like ESXi server by VMware.

I am going to talk about VMware Server 2 today and my experiences with it.

VMware Server 2 is available for Windows and Linux, I have a copy for both but I decided to install it in Linux (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS). My reasons for this were Linux is not as resource hungry as Windows is, and I find it has better system resource management which is needed to ensure the virtual machine runs well.

A side step to this post just to prove how well Ubuntu Linux works in terms of resource management I am going to install this on a P4 2.8ghz computer with only 1gb of ram and a 8mb graphics card. Ideally I should set up a Windows install as well on the same computer and do some performance metrics for an accurate analysis of resources but I just do not have the time at present, but may do so in the future. NOTE This will not make a suitable hardware environment when you want to start running multiple VM’s of different operating systems doing resource hungry tasks at the same time it will be ok to run 2 – 3 OS’s for demonstration and basic use.

The first thing I did was obtain my copy of VMware Server 2 from the VMware website http://www.vmware.com as we are installing this in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS 32bit we will need to get the tar.gz version for the 32bit environment. If you are using a 64bit operating system make sure you download the right version.

I had to download some headers for Ubuntu so VMware can compile successfully during the install process. To do this open a console and type in “sudo aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential xinetd” followed by your user password.

Next I navigated to the location where the copy of VMware is, I put mine in /ktemp which was a folder I set up earlier.

Once in the location of the file I did a “ls” command just to make sure the file is there it should be named “VMware-server-(version_number)” where version_number is the version at the time of obtaining your copy. E.g. VMware-server-2.0.1-156745.x86_32.tar.gz

Next the file will need unpacking so I issued the command “sudo tar zxvf VMware-server-(version_number).tar.gz” this will unpack the file into some folders.

I change directory to the distribution folder by typing “cd vmware-server-distrib”

Then I execute the installation command “sudo ./vmware-install.pl”

This started the installation process, and prompted questions on how you want to install and configure VMware Server 2. I just accepted the default values that appear in the square brackets []. To accept the default values just press enter all the way through the install process.

During the install process I was prompted for my serial number which I typed in. You have to type this in capital letters with the hyphens in the right place e.g. XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Ubuntu does not have a root password as such so I had to create this. I did this by issuing the command “sudo passwd root” and then entered in the password I wanted for root.

I closed any open consoles or windows, and opened up my browser. (VMware Server unlike VMware Workstation has a web interface for its control) I went to the address and port http://127.0.0.1:8222 which loaded fine and asked if I wanted to allow this content which I did so I added the exception. (Note, if your system is on a network you will be able to access the VMware Server from any computer on the network through any web browser by typing in the address of the computer it is installed/hosted on, for example if the VMware Servers IP address was 192.168.0.1 you could just type in http://192.168.0.1:8222 from a different computer.)

After allowing access to the address from the browser and adding any exceptions, I was presented with a log in screen. The root login that I enabled earlier is the one I need to log in with, it will not allow access with any other account unless you configure/specify that account during the install process.

Once logged in I was presented with the control / administration panel. From here you can begin adding new virtual machines onto the server.

In this control panel you can add in additional data stores (hard drives, USB hard drives etc), Create virtual machines, and various other tasks. The interface is quite self explanatory. A nice feature I like is the summary page for the server stating how much of the resources are being used but it is not a live feed you will need to refresh the page to get up to date information.

I installed one Windows XP Pro operating system and did the windows updates to it, and one Ubuntu server 8.10 running mySQL, and Apache, as virtual machines. Both had 8 GB of hard drive space, for Windows I gave 200mb of ram, and Ubuntu server I gave 128mb of ram. Both of these virtual machines had no problems running at the same time.

I used bridged networking so an IP address is picked from the DHCP server on the internal network causing no communication problems between the VM’s and the host operating system or other computers on the internal network, which was proven by all being able to ping each other and all operating systems virtual or physical on the network being able to see my virtual Ubuntu server displaying the Apache “It Works” homepage when navigating to the IP address of the Ubuntu server.

Other networking options are available such as local and NAT and you can change to these at any time from the control panel.

Overall the installation went smoothly without any problems on the way, and I can happily administer my VMware Server from anywhere on my network.

Any questions regarding this please get in touch with me, my contact details are available on the contacts page.

What have your experiences been like with VMware Server 2?