VMWare Archives - Stefcho's Tech Blog

Windows Server 8 on VM Workstation 8 with Hyper-V Role

Posted on 09/10/2011 - 18/02/2019 by Stefan

As you probably know, on the Build conference was announced the Developer Previews of Windows 8 and Windows Server 8.

Because of the numerous new features in Hyper-V 3.0 I want to check them personally. Because I do not have two spare boxes on which to install them, virtualization comes in play.

Before Hyper-V role is added to the server, there is configuration to be made on the Virtual Machine:

The best description of the process that I find is in this article:

Nesting Hyper-V with VMware Workstation 8 and ESXi 5

In the Processors configuration Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT must be checked,

And one line must be added to the configuration file vmx:

hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = “FALSE”

That’s it, now you can add Hyper-V role and play with it.

Install Open VM Tools package on pfSense 2.0 RC3 for VMWare

Posted on 30/07/2011 - 18/02/2019 by Stefan

In my previous posts we’ve Install pfSense 2.0 RC1 on VMWare Workstation 7 and adjusted the memory of the Virtual Machines in pfSense 2.0 RC1 on VMware Workstation 7.1.4 – RAM size.

Now let’s continue with the setup of the Virtual Machine with the installation of VMware Tools for pfSense.

For that purpose go to System > Packages

, and on the Available Packages find Open-VM-Tools. Click on the “+” next to it and start the installation.

Wait it to finish, and on the Installed packages you should see it listed. Click on the link below Package Info, to see the instructions how to verify successful installation.

The operation boils down to connecting to the console and executing first and monitor the output.

ps ax|grep vmware

kldstat


That's it.

pfSense 2.0 RC1 on VMware Workstation 7.1.4 – RAM size

Posted on 15/05/2011 - 18/02/2019 by Stefan

In this post, I’ve recorded a quick video about how to configure a VM for pfSense 2.0 RC1. In this clip the VM RAM size was 256. For testing purposes I usually ought to use 128 the minimum amount.

During the first boot of the system, the following Warning message pops up. There is no enough memory.

So my recommendation is to set this parameter to minimum 156 MB for RAM.

Doing so Will provide the system with 130 MB RAM.

Hope this help.

Running DD-WRT on VMware Workstation 7.1

Posted on 03/04/2011 - 18/02/2019 by Stefan

Now that’s a tricky one. The only official build that could be found is here

But it was published in the middle of 2008. It is a pure v24, no Service Packs, this by itself makes it useless.

Guide for installing newer version is not available.

After searching the forums, the only usable thread that I found is this: VMware ready to use ..

Here stalonge share a pre-installed virtual machine ready to use.

My recommendation is to Restore it to Factory Default, and configure it to your preference.

Install pfSense 2.0 RC1 on VMWare Workstation 7

Posted on 29/03/2011 - 18/02/2019 by Stefan

On this video you can see the step by step guide of how to install pfSense 2.0 RC1 on VM Ware Workstation 7.1.

Download the ISO file from Here.

Configure the Virtual Machine and mount the ISO file.

Go over the Setup, and configure the interfaces.

As option you can enable SSH access.

This is the first part of the network laboratory setup.

Have fun, and I hope you enjoy the video.

My Network Laboratory

Posted on 29/03/2011 - 18/02/2019 by Stefan

The easiest way to learn is by practice. This is especially true in IT. I have to lab out the migration from pfSense 1.2.3 to 2.0 RC1. Furthermore I have a site-to-site VPN setup that must be tested too.

I decided to expand my laboratory setup to house not just the two versions of pfSense, but DD-WRT and OpenWrt also. This will give me a opportunity to expand my test with alternatives. That is not enough, so let’s add two of each as virtual machines. Now we need a router in the middle to move the traffic between different subnets. Using any of the above will be redundant, so after browsing the VMware market for router appliance, as first option came Untangle, but I have already played around with it, and it is not appropriate for my purposes. As reasonable alternative is Vyatta. I had no experience with this appliance, and decide to check it out.

My finale network diagram looks like this:

The Console and Client are a simple Windows XP workstation from which to manage all the routers remotely by SSH and Web Interface.

As you can imagine if all the routers WAN addresses were in one sub-net, the Vyatta would be unnecessary, but my decision was based on the need to be able to test load balancing, fail over, and other scenarios in future.

In the following post I will discuss in details the configuration of each type of route. As a brief impression from the installation and configuration starting from the easiest to setup and going to the hardest ones.

PfSense have a Live CD, and is a breeze to install and configure on x86 virtual machine.

Then is the Vyatta, also available on Live CD that can be installed on virtual machine. For the configuration I have used the shell, only later to discover that there is a web interface that is somewhat helpful.

DD-WRT is hard to get on x86 virtual machine. I have opt out to find ready-made virtual machine and only to restore it to default configuration, and then to configure it to my preferences.

OpenWrt is even harder. On the forums the recommended way is to compile it for this architecture, and then install it. There is a wonderful tutorial here how to set it up on virtual box, but it does not work on VMware workstation. My guess is if you reconfigure the hard disk portions it will work. But yet again, my decision was to use ready-made virtual machine with the latest version, and configure it to my likings.

The easiest way to learn is by practice. This is especially true in IT. So now I have to lab out the migration from pfSense 1.2.3 to 2.0 RC1. Furthermore I have a site-to-site VPN setup that must be tested too.

I decided to expand my laboratory setup to house not just the two versions of pfSense, but DD-WRT and OpenWrt also. That is not enough, so let’s add two of each as virtual machines. Now we need a router in the middle to move the traffic between different subnets. Using any of the above will be redundant, so after browsing the VMware market for router appliance, as first option came Untangle, but I have already played around with it, and it is not appropriate for my purposes. As alternative to Untangle, Vyatta pop up from the result. I had no experience with this appliance, and decide to check it out.

My finale network diagram is like this:

The console and Client are a simple Windows XP workstation from which to manage all the routers remotely by SSH and Web Interface.

As you can imagine if all the routers WAN addresses were in one subnet, the Vyatta would be unnecessary, but my decision was based on the need to be able to test load balancing, failover, and other scenarios in future.

In the following post I will discuss in details the configuration of each type of route. Now let’s go from the fore a brief impression from the installation and configuration starting from the easiest to setup and going to the hardest ones.

PfSense have a live cd, and is a breeze to install and configure on x86 virtual machine. The only interesting this here is how to publish the web interface and the SSH on the WAN.

Then is the Vyatta, also available on live cd that can be installed on virtual machine. For the configuration I have used the shell, only later to discover that there is a web interface that is somewhat helpful.

DD-WRT is hard to get on x86 virtual machine. I have opt out to find ready-made virtual machine and only to restore it to default configuration, and then to configure it to my preferences.

The easiest way to learn is by practice. This is especially true in IT. I have to lab out the migration from pfSense 1.2.3 to 2.0 RC1. Furthermore I have a site-to-site VPN setup that must be tested too.

I decided to expand my laboratory setup to house not just the two versions of pfSense, but DD-WRT and OpenWrt also. This will give me a opportunity to expand my test with alternatives. That is not enough, so let’s add two of each as virtual machines. Now we need a router in the middle to move the traffic between different subnets. Using any of the above will be redundant, so after browsing the VMware market for router appliance, as first option came Untangle, but I have already played around with it, and it is not appropriate for my purposes. As reasonable alternative is Vyatta. I had no experience with this appliance, and decide to check it out.

My finale network diagram looks like this:

The Console and Client are a simple Windows XP workstation from which to manage all the routers remotely by SSH and Web Interface.

As you can imagine if all the routers WAN addresses were in one subnet, the Vyatta would be unnecessary, but my decision was based on the need to be able to test load balancing, failover, and other scenarios in future.

In the following post I will discuss in details the configuration of each type of route. As a brief impression from the installation and configuration starting from the easiest to setup and going to the hardest ones.

PfSense have a live cd, and is a breeze to install and configure on x86 virtual machine.

Then is the Vyatta, also available on live cd that can be installed on virtual machine. For the configuration I have used the shell, only later to discover that there is a web interface that is somewhat helpful.

DD-WRT is hard to get on x86 virtual machine. I have opt out to find ready-made virtual machine and only to restore it to default configuration, and then to configure it to my preferences.

OpenWrt is even harder. On the forums the recommended way is to compile it for this architecture, and then install it. There is a wonderful tutorial here how to set it up on virtual box, but it does not work on VMware workstation. My guess is if you reconfigure the hard disk portions it will work. But yet again, my decision was to use ready-made virtual machine with the latest version, and configure it to my likings.

Import Microsoft VMs in VMWare Workstation

Posted on 24/07/2010 - 18/02/2019 by Stefan

I was trying to test System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 Evaluation Copy. But did not happened to have virtual server or hyper v. So I decide to import it in VMWare Workstation. The following error appeared when I try to import it “source format was not understood”.
After googeling it, the only relative result was : Converting Microsoft’s Virtual Server Machine to VMWare

“Today I downloaded a SharePoint virtual machine from Microsoft. When I tried to import it to VMWare I got an error that said “source format was not understood”. I google the error and didn’t come with a solution to my problem. So I did the next logical thing, I open the VMC file for the Virtual Server and poked around. I found that the attribute didn’t have any value. I changed that value to the physical location of the machine. In my case it was F:\Virtual Machines\MOSS Demo\WIN03_MOSS.vhd

When I started the import from VMWare, it worked.”

Close, but did not do the job for me. After reading the .vmc file.

Obviously this portion was the problematic one:

First I fixed the first absolute with new path, but still it was not working. Then think about it VMWare have completely different way of managing disk, to the relative and the differencing did not seem to fit in the picture. Removing the “relative type=”string”.\SCEsp1VHDSERVER_Diff.vhd” do the trick.

Hope this will be fixed later on.