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4 Easy Steps to Install and Configure VMware Server 2 on Linux

VMware Server runs on top of an existing host operating system (Linux or Windows) as shown below. This is a quick way to get started with the VMware. Refer to our VMware introduction article to get a high level understanding on virtualization fundamentals.

1. Download VMware Server 2

Go to VMware Server download page . VMware Server 2 is free. But, you should register on VMware website to get the license key.

On the download page following download options are available. In my case, I downloaded the binary .rpm format.

  • VMware Server 2 for Windows Operating Systems – Binary .exe format
  • VMware Server 2 for Linux Operating Systems – Binary .gz format
  • VMware Server 2 for Linux Operating Systems – Binary .rpm format

2. Install VMware Server 2

Install the VMware Server 2.0.2 rpm as shown below.

# rpm -ivh VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.i386.rpm

Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
1:VMware-server          ########################################### [100%]

The installation of VMware Server 2.0.2 for Linux completed successfully.
You can decide to remove this software from your system at any time by
invoking the following command: "rpm -e VMware-server".

Before running VMware Server for the first time, you need to
configure it for your running kernel by invoking the
following command: "/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl".

Enjoy,

--the VMware team

3. Configure VMware Server 2 using vmware-config.pl

Execute the vmware-config.pl as shown below. Make sure to enter the appropriate serial number that you got from vmware website.

Accept default values for everything. Partial output of the vmware-config.pl is shown below.

# /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl

Do you accept? (yes/no) yes
Do you want networking for your virtual machines? (yes/no/help) [yes]
Please specify a name for this network. [Bridged]
Your computer has multiple ethernet network interfaces available: eth0, eth1.
Which one do you want to bridge to vmnet0? [eth0]
Do you want to be able to use NAT networking in your virtual machines? (yes/no) [yes]
Please specify a name for this network. [NAT]
Do you want this program to probe for an unused private subnet? (yes/no/help) [yes]
Do you wish to configure another NAT network? (yes/no) [no]
Do you want to be able to use host-only networking in your virtual machines? [yes]
Please specify a name for this network. [HostOnly]
Do you want this program to probe for an unused private subnet? (yes/no/help [yes]
Do you wish to configure another host-only network? (yes/no) [no]
Please specify a port for remote connections to use [902]
Please specify a port for standard http connections to use [8222]
Please specify a port for secure http (https) connections to use [8333]
The current administrative user for VMware Server  is ''.  Would you like to specify a different administrator? [no]
Using root as the VMware Server administrator.
In which directory do you want to keep your virtual machine files? [/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines]

Please enter your 20-character serial number.
Type XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX or 'Enter' to cancel:  AAAAA-BBBBB-CCCCC-DDDDD

Starting VMware services:
Virtual machine monitor                                 [  OK  ]
Virtual machine communication interface                 [  OK  ]
VM communication interface socket family:               [  OK  ]
Virtual ethernet                                        [  OK  ]
Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0                       [  OK  ]
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 (background)        [  OK  ]
DHCP server on /dev/vmnet1                              [  OK  ]
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 (background)        [  OK  ]
DHCP server on /dev/vmnet8                              [  OK  ]
NAT service on /dev/vmnet8                              [  OK  ]
VMware Server Authentication Daemon (background)        [  OK  ]
Shared Memory Available                                 [  OK  ]
Starting VMware management services:
VMware Server Host Agent (background)                   [  OK  ]
VMware Virtual Infrastructure Web Access
Starting VMware autostart virtual machines:
Virtual machines                                        [  OK  ]

The configuration of VMware Server 2.0.2 build-203138 for Linux for this
running kernel completed successfully.

4. Go to VMware Infrastructure Webaccess

As part of the vmware-config.pl, it starts all the required VMware services and also adds to the start-up script. To verify whether all the VMware scripts starts appropriately during start-up, reboot the server.

Go to https://{host-os-ip}:8333/ui to access the VMware Infrastructure web access console. This will prompt for the login and password as shown below. LoginName is root. Password is host OS root password.

Fig: VMware Web Access Login

In the upcoming article, we’ll discuss on how to create virtual machine using the inftrastructure webaccess.

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Comments on this entry are closed.

  • gjorgi June 16, 2010, 7:49 am

    Yet another great article from Ramesh. You could have expanded a bit on port(s) to which this server is listening or/and just briefly note how virtual machines are created with vmware before you leave the details for the next article.

  • Harbinger June 17, 2010, 7:13 am

    This is a nice guide, but I’m sorry to report that VMWare Server has reached “End of Availability” per VMWare:

    http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/lifecycle/general/index.html#policy_server

  • Keith Osborne June 19, 2010, 4:14 am

    By default VMWare server appears to run it’s RAM from hard disk space which kills performance. To stop it – add the following to /etc/vmware/config:

    tmpDirectory = “/tmp/vmware”
    mainMem.useNamedFile = “FALSE”
    sched.mem.pshare.enable = “FALSE”
    MemTrimRate = “0”
    MemAllowAutoScaleDown = “FALSE”

    Then create /tmp/vmware and add an FSTAB entry like so:

    tmpfs /tmp/vmware tmpfs rw,size=5120M 0 0

    This creates some tmpfs for the RAM to run from that is actually run from RAM meaning a huge performance improvement.