VMware EXSi 6.5.0 a.k.a vSphere Hypervisor

February 11, 2018

I decided to install the vSphere Hypervisor to see what that looks like now. They have so many things there that it can be pretty confusing just to get started. So that always put me off, not because it doesn't work, but because it sucks to have to go dig information just to get started. Needless to say, here's the new VMware EXSi and you will see what I mean.

Below are all the installation pictures.

 So the very first thing to do is to download the iso and make a bootable image. I used Rufus for this as I have found it to work well and not give me grief.

 

I went ahead and used a 2gig sd card. I have two laying around, so this is more than enough space for this.

 Here is the old machine I use for testing. Nothing special but It has the usb ports at the front so I don't have to keep reaching behind it. After creating the boot disk, I plugged it into my usb reader and away I went. Okay, not really. I started with the top usb 3 port and as you may or may not know, you can't boot from those ports. All I saw was a dash across the screen that just froze there. So I moved it down to the usb 2 port and it was good to go.

 It started fine this time. These are the pictures I took with my phone in order to get these. I couldn't  do screenshots since it was not installed on the actual machine.

 Here's the first password request.

 

 Here's a second password request. I have to double check this since I thought it was the same one as above and root was already on this one here. So this was a bit confusing. You may want to use the same thing or something else. Either way, just make sure to write down these so that you can get back into the system later on.

Once it was installed, I was able to log into the server from my other computer. This is the login page here. So the installation wasn't too bad, as you can see there was not much to install on the bare metal. I like simple installs that go quick and without any problems.


In any case, a few things to point out is that setting up these take time. You need to get the hardware, install the system, then you still need to configure it. This is just to get started. Then you have to install each vm and configure those. So it's a process that takes time. As you can see from the video, I couldn't even get a single vm installed, so you will run into things no matter what you use.

February 17, 2018
Here's the update on this. I figured out how get the virtual machines installed. I just thought I add that video here.