Installing VMWare on CentOS 5.x (64-bit)

Installing is easy.Login to the server with the root user.

First, we need to download the VMWare installer.You can get to the download via http://vmware.com/download/server/.Once here, click on the download link, accept the EULA, and download the LinuxTarball (VMware-server-1.0.3-44356.tar.gz in my case):

·Main Download Link: http://vmware.com/download/server/

·# wget –O vmware-server.tar.gz http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmserver/VMware-server-1.0.3-44356.tar.gz

After downloading the software, you will need to get a license key (which is free in the free version of VMWare Server).To register, just fill out the form at the following:

·http://register.vmware.com/content/registration.html

Next, extract the tarball:

·# tar -xzvf vmware-server.tar.gz

Before we actually get rolling on the install, let’s take care of some dependencies first:

·# yum update
# yum install libXtst.i386
# yum install libXrender.i386
# yum install xinetd

Once completed, now go into the directory:

·# cd vmware-server-distrib/

Next, run the vmware install script:

·# ./vmware-install.pl

Next, the install is going to ask you some basic questions and wanting to know what directories it wants you to create and install certain parts of VMWare into.From here, you would just take the defaults.When it asks you to accept the license agreement, please do so, so that you can proceed on with the install.

You will probably run across this question:

“None of the pre-built vmmon modules for VMware Server is suitable for your running kernel.Do you want this program to try to build the vmmon module for your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)?”

You will need to answer “yes” to this question (which is the default).

VMWare Networking Setup

The next question is “Do you want networking for your virtual machines? (yes/no/help)”.Answer yes, as we want to create a network setup for your public network device, so that you can access the internet on your virtual machines.

The next question you will be asked is “Your computer has multiple ethernet network interfaces available: eth0, eth1. Which one do you want to bridge to vmnet0?”.This is a very important question.Remember, the way all Softlayer servers are setup and run are that the public network runs on eth1 and the private network runs off of eth0.In VMWare, the default bridge device for vmnet0is eth0, which is definaltely not what we are going to want to do, especially if we are wanting to have internet access from the virtual machines.So, instead of pressing enter, type in: eth1.

Bridging the Private Network (Softlayer Style)

The next question can either be answered as yes or no.The question is “Do you wish to configure another bridged network?”. If you plan on running services or other applications off of your private network, then you should probably actually proceed with “yes” to this question.So that everything is covered, go ahead and say “yes” (unless you know you won’t be using the private network), so that we can create a network bridge to your private network.Once, you type in “yes” and press enter, it will automatically use eth0 as the interface, as that is the only one left available (since you only have two network cards in the server).

Other Networking Settings

You will be presented with a few other questions regarding the network setup of VMWare Server.Please proceed with the following recommendations:

“Do you want to be able to use NAT networking in your virtual machines?”

·Proceed with “yes”

“Do you want this program to probe for an unused private subnet?”

·Proceed with “yes”

·Once this completes, make sure you do not configure another NAT network.

“Do you want to be able to use host-only networking in your virtual machines?”

·Proceed with “yes”

“Do you want this program to probe for an unused private subnet?”

·Proceed with “yes”

·Once this completes, make sure you do not configure another host-only network.

Specifying Listening Port

The next question it is going to ask is what port you are wanting VMWare server to listen on, and the default port is 904.Some people change this, but personally I keep it set to the default.

Where To Store The Virtual Machines

The next question that the installer asks is “In which directory do you want to keep your virtual machine files?”.The default place is /var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines, however, I recommend that you place the virtual machines in a place where you have plenty of disk space, such as a redundant RAID array or a large secondary hard drive.Always make sure that you have enough room for a virtual machine.In this case, you could use a mount point /data/vm, that is mounted to a large disk.

Provide Serial Number for VMWare

The final part of the installation requires you to insert a VMWare license key/serial number.You should already have one, if you followed the instructions in this article.If you have not generated a license key,yet, please do by going to the URL mentioned at the beginning of this article.If you have the serial number for this VMWare server, please insert it into the prompt and then press enter.

You should see something similar to the following:

·“The configuration of VMware Server 1.0.3 build-44356 for Linux for this running kernel completed successfully.”

VMWare is now set up on your server.Now, all that is left to do is download the VMWare Server Console, which is the GUI client for your VMWare server that allows you to set up, configure, and install virtual machines.

The VMWare Server Console is the client application for VMWare Server.It allows you to literally manage the VMWare server as a whole.You can create,configure, and install virtual machines, just with a click of some buttons. In order to get this installed, you actually have to download the VMware Server Windows client package, which is located on the same that you downloaded VMWare for Linux at the beginning of this article.This package is the .zip file.Once it has downloaded to the system, just extract the package wherever you find it convenient to and install the VMware-console-1.0.3-x file.When this has completed installing, you are done installing the VMWare Server Console and you are ready to configure your VMWare server.

Note: This article does not cover how to configure VMWare server or even set up virtual machines.Setting up virtual machines are somewhat self-explainatory, however, if you want some assistance in doing so, please open a support ticket and we can walk you through a few things, however, we do not currently support VMWare or any Virtualization products.

Open the VMWare Server Console from the computer you installed it on.When it loads you will be prompted with a “Switch Host” (login) screen.Use the following credentials (and use the screenshot for reference).VMWare Server uses the Linux system username/passwords to authenticate users, so you will need to use the usernames (root in particular) to login to VMWare.

Hostname: IP address plus port (e.g. 67.228.160.201:904)
User Name: root
Password: password (use the real root password of the system)

Configuring The Firewall Rules (IPTables)

If you have any issues actually connecting to the VMWare server, and it is not an authentication issue (if you get a username/password error then you have a bad user or password), then your firewall might be blocking you from connecting to the VMWare Server.To resolve this, try adding the following IPTable rule into your /etc/sysconfig/iptables file (and make sure that the naming convention follows your server configuation, as my rule might be slightly wrong if your chain is named differently):

·# -A FWALL-INPUT -p tcp -m tcp -s 0/0 –dport 904 -j ACCEPT

That just about wraps things up on how to install VMWare and at least get things started.Even though we currently do not yet support VMWare, any one of the Support Technicians will be more than happy to try to assist you and answer any questions you may have.