Memory Allocation

Your next two screens allow you to accept your license agreement and enter your serial numbers, one for VMware ESX Server and one for “Virtual SMP.” The Virtual SMP serial number allows your virtual machines to take advantage of multiple processors.

After you enter your serial numbers, you will then allocate the reserved memory to your virtual machines.

Chose a disk partition strategy

Next, you will partition your ESX Server.

Define disk partitions

You can use the automatic partitioning or choose to manually partition your server.

Enter the IP addressing information

Now you are ready to enter your IP addressing information and set your Time Zone.

Setup passwords and accounts

Next, set the “root” password and add any additional user accounts that you need to set up. Usually at least one user account should be added so that you don’t always have to log in as root.

The final screens allow you to simply complete the installation. Remember to reboot at the end.

VMWare Management Interface

After the machine has rebooted, you can log in to the server with the IP address you specified. Simply open up Internet Explorer and type in the URL. After you log in, you are presented with the screen shown here.

Swap space configuration

The first thing you need to do is to create a swap space file. Next to where it says “Warning: No swap space is configured or none is active,” click the Reconfigure link. A new window will pop up for Swap Configuration. Click the Create link and then follow the steps to set up the swap file.

Configure the virtual switch

After you are finished with the swap file, you need to create a virtual switch. Next to where it says “Warning: No virtual Ethernet switches found,” click the Reconfigure link and you will be presented with the window shown here. Give the virtual adapter a name and then select the physical Ethernet card(s) to bind to it.

The core of ESX Server is now set up and ready to go. You can review and tweak your configuration by clicking on the Options tab or you can begin to install virtual machines from the Status Monitor tab.