<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">eGroup engineer Will Turbeville and I had a successful day at the eGroup data center in Greenville, SC a few weeks ago installing the VMware vSphere beta on two hosts and building a Windows 2008 vSphere (VirtualCenter) server as a VM in our lab there.  For those who might not have heard, vSphere is the name of the next release of ESX and VirtualCenter.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">Here are my notes and observations on the process:</span></p>

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<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">We experienced some of the same issues that I came across in my first attempt at installing the vSphere beta on my lab servers at home (chronicled <a href="http://blogs.egroup.jasonmangone.com/?p=553" target="_blank">here</a></span><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">).</span></div></li>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">The primary installation issues we encountered involved the lack of a DVD drive in older servers.  Will was able to install ESX via iLO, but he had to install an iLO Advanced license to enable the remote media feature.  This worked but was very slow, and it took something like an hour to complete the installation.  I was able to install ESXi on the other host just fine via CD.</span></div></li>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">When ESX 3.5 is installed, remote access by the root account is disabled by default.  In the beta remote root access is enabled by default and there’s a “Lockdown” checkbox to disable it if desired.  This is a great convenience to the installer!</span></div></li>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">We were able to mix ESX and ESXi in an HA cluster but because ESXi uses a “Management Network” instead of a “Service Console” we had to tweak the HA configuration by adding two das.allowNetwork entries in the HA Advanced section as explained in this <a href="http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&amp;cmd=displayKC&amp;externalId=1006541" target="_blank">VMware KB article</a>.</span></div></li>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">The installation process was mostly familiar but VMware has added a TON of new features and options to the GUI.  There’s a lot more to explore here (hopefully in a future blog post!)</span></div></li>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">I think there’s a common misconception that because ESXi is free that it’s crippled somehow, but this is not the case.  The free ESXi does everything ESX does with one exception: </span><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">Because ESXi doesn’t have a service console there’s no way to install 3<sup>rd</sup>-party management or backup agents.  You can still access the command line using the Remote Command Line Interface (Remote CLI).</span></div></li>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri;">The free ESXi is just like ESX in that it cannot be managed by vSphere/vCenter unless it’s licensed.</span></div></li>
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