[CentOS] Xen or VMWARE on CentOS 5

[Les Mikesell]

Bill Campbell wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 27, 2008, Les Mikesell wrote:
>> Ern jura wrote:
>>> Does anyone out there have a comprehensive tutorial on installing VMware 
>>> and
>>> successfully managing virtual machines with either xen or vmware?
>> VMware is pretty simple: download the server rpm, install it, run the 
>> vmware-config.pl setup script to set the options and install your (free) 
>> license key.  Then run vmware locally or from some other machine to 
>> access the console where you can create and start the virtual machines. 
>> Once created, you can treat the virtual machines like they were 
>> separate physical boxes except that they contend for host resources (and 
>> once they are up on the network I prefer to connect directly to them 
>> with ssh, X, freenx, or vnc instead of using the VMware console.  You'll 
>> want plenty of RAM on the host machine and if you run several VM's they 
>> will perform better if you can spread them over different disk drives.
> 
> I just started playing with VMware-server-1.0.5-80187 on a 64-bit
> CentOS 5 system system, and am having some issues with the hotkey
> switching.  Running the vmware-server-console via an ssh
> connection from a PPC Mac Mini, it doesn't recognize the ctrl-alt
> sequences, which isn't totally surprising as I'm using a PS/2
> Microsoft Natural keyboard on a KVM switch with a USB->PS/2
> adapter.  When I try running it directly on the CentOS system's
> console through the same KVM switch, it doesn't respond either.
> 
> I have installed SCO Openserver 5.0.6a on a virtual image, and
> that seems to be working OK (my primary object now with VMware is
> to have a fall-back when customer's OSR5 system's hardware goes
> south).  I have had at least one situation where it didn't
> recognize the CTRL-RightButton sequence in an xterm running on
> the OSR5 image.

As I mentioned in the post above, I prefer to connect directly to the 
guests once their network is up instead of using the vmware console - 
and especially so for a guest OS that doesn't have a vmware-tools 
package.  I only use the console long enough to create and configure the 
guest systems.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com