Installating vSphere ESXi on a USB stick

Like most of you I’m running ESXi on my server at home because the
license is free. I’m just a one person company so I don’t have the money (or want to spend it on other stuff) for vSphere ESX. For my tests vSphere ESXi is enough.

As could could read in previous posts, my servers have a card reader in them. So I installed ESX 3.5i on a flash card and let me server boot from them.

But what about vSphere ESXi? Lucky the procedure to install vSphere ESXi on a USB stick or flash card hasn’t changed. But just to make sure:

1. First get the following tools: 7-Zip(Free), WinImage(Demo)
2. Download the ESXi ISO (VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.0.0-164009.x86_64.iso)
3. Open the ISO with 7-Zip
4. Open “image.tgz” with 7-Zip
5. Browse to “image.tgz.temptarusrlibvmwareinstallerVMware-VMvisor-big-xxxxxx-x86_64.dd.bz2”
6. Extract “VMware-VMvisor-big-xxxxxx-x86_64.dd”
7. Open WinImage and go to Disk, click on “Restore Virtual Harddisk Image on physical drive”
8. Select a physical drive
9. Select “VMware-VMvisor-big-xxxxxx-x86_64.dd”
10. And click “yes” to write the DD image to the USB Dis

Note: You can replace xxxxxx by the version number of the download.

Changing the default SSL Certificate in VMware View

I was looking around to see if somebody posted a blog  how to replace the default SSL certificate in VMware View with a official singend certificate.
And I found one at tcpdump.com.

This save me a lot of work. Thanks!

Cool: Geeko Builder

It seems that Novell has learned from the past.
Merchandising and advertising is very important. And with SUSE Novell has a mascot, Geeko.

Geeko has shown up in many wallpapers and now there is a site (www.geekobuilder.com) where
you can create and customize your own Geeko.
It’s possible to customize his outfit, background, hair, glasses etc.

Does it have a use? No… Does it have to? No! It’s just fun!

So go on…. Create your own Geeko!

Import CA Certificate ZCM 10

If you (Like me) don’t like waiting for the error that the Certificate Authority of you ZCM server is not trusted, you can import this certificate in you webbrowser.
This will speed the initial connection up.

IE7

• Connect to you ZCM server with IE7 (https://zcm-server/zenworks)
• Wait for the error that your certificate is not trusted
• Click on Continue to this website (not recoomended)
• Wait until the ZCM inlog screen appears
• Click next to the address of you ZCM server on the Certificate Error. A screen will pop-up
• Click on View certificate
• Click on the Certification path tab
• Click on the name of you Certificate Authority (the one with the red cross in it)
• Click on the View Certificate button
• Click on the Install Certificate button
• Click on Next
• Again click on Next
• Click on Finish
• You will get a Security warning that your about to install the certificate, so click on Yes
• You will get a message that the import is successful
• Close the certificates an close the browser
• Again connect to you ZCM server. If everything was done alright you won’t get a error that the certificate is not trusted

VMware ESX Course

This week I’m giving a evening cource Pratical Management of VMware ESX
for the people of Peopleware.  Peopleware is a dutch company in the IT Sector.

The course starts at 13:00 so in the morning I’m updating my cource material
N8004 (ZENworks 10 Advance Administration) to SP2. I thinks the student
will like to to this course at SP2 level rather than SP1.