How to Use VMware Workstation (with Pictures) – wikiHow
If you are new to VMware or just starting out in the tech, you may feel a bit confused about products naming. Well, at least I was. There are tons of products in the suite so many have a hard time grasping how all those things come together. For instance, it may be hard for a beginner to tell apart ESXi and vSphere. What should you do? Well, nothing special, you know. Ask fellow admins. Look through forums. Read books. Well, my post is not here to bring you from the very beginning to finish.
Honestly, I got some knowledge only through fixing things that I had messed up. This post covers some questions that popped out in my head when I was only starting.
And, my case is not unique. I wish I wrote this article at the very beginning of my blog. Things would seem rather logical if I explained things you should consider starting with VMware first and then gradually moved to some more interesting stuff. Well, whatever, what done is done. And, I want to start this article with the glossary just as any good introduction article.
Here are just a few names that were troublesome for me to tell apart:. If you have troubles with understanding any other VMware-related name, just google it!
Fortunately, the company provides enough materials to answer that kind of questions. Exploring any solution, you should start with its licensing. Yes, you still need to look through VMware ESXi licensing even though the official documentation says the hypervisor to be free.
Just complete the registration and you are good to go! You see, you can get only Evaluation version in that way. Well, no worries, you still can get the unlimited free version. Its key is available in your account once you register at the official website. Both are based on the same source code. But, they are dramatically different though.
For instance, Backup API is disabled in the free version. Also, you cannot manage ESXi hosts via vCenter while running a free version. Many think that they can do a lot of cool stuff without shared storage. You need shared storage for them, you know. Shared storage, for my money, is always better. It is reliable and once tuned properly delivers the required performance. Well, wait, we have here an article about fundamentals, right? It can be implemented as internal and external storage units.
Internal storage units are hard disks located inside your ESXi host. Local storage units can be arranged into RAIDs allowing you to achieve high performance and redundancy. Although this storage configuration is simple, it is not recommended. You see, those single connections between hosts and storage units are single points of failure.
If they are interrupted, the entire thing fails. Second, storage devices do not support multiple connections. So, you cannot use multiple paths to access the storage.
Third, you cannot share across multiple hosts. The shared storage architecture, in its turn, is a type of storage resource that is accessed by many hosts simultaneously. It can also be cloud storage. With VMware vSAN, building shared storage becomes even cheaper as it can be run on whatever hardware that fits its hardware compatibility list.
Provisioning type is another thing admins usually are hard to decide on. You see, you need to understand clearly what actually you expect from the virtual disk for: high performance, security, or storage efficiency. Thick-provisioned disks consume all the space allocated to them in the datastore right from the moment of their creation preventing anything else from using that space.
On each, you used only 10 GB. Yet, as you created two thick-provisioned devices, there will be no free space on the datastore even though you used only 20 GB! Even though you may be running out of space fairly easy, thick provisioned disks are fast to create and deliver good performance.
In this way, a VM can access old data. They treat initial data differently, but they both get all of the required space right from their creation. Well, that looks a bit more secure than just thick provisioning, yet lazy-zeroed disks performance will be lower for the first writes. Eager zeroed disks, in their turn, consume all the allocated space during their creation.
Previously written data are wiped out, so it takes you longer to create such disks. On the other hand, their first writes are faster, and these disks are pretty secure. You see, when a VMDK is deleted, the blocks are just marked available until they get overwritten. For eager-zeroed virtual disks, the entire allocated space is freed from data, while in case of lazy zeroing previous data are removed block by block. While being created, thin provisioned disks consume the minimal initial space and grow as they get filled by data.
Both have only 10 GB used, so effectively, you have only 20 GB consumed, and there still should be 40 GB of free space on the datastore even though its entire space has been pre-allocated.
Thin-provisioned virtual disks are quick to create and are really good when it comes to saving space. Still, their performance is not good enough. You see, when you create a thin provisioned disk, operating system deletes only the indexes from the file table referring to the file body in the file system. So, when new data arrive, zeroing occurs block-by-block just as for lazy zeroed disks.
There are bunch of problems with thin provisioned disks. If you experience any of them, just google how to remediate those issues. Many beginners believe snapshots to be the same thing as backups. Backups are the copies of data that can be used to recover them on any device. So, you can roll back to those copies whenever you want wherever you need.
Snapshots, in their turn, just keep some VM states, and they are not something you can roll back if your VM goes dies. If you want your precious data to survive whatever bad happens, you need regular backups. In order not to screw things up, never ever rely on snapshots as a recovery point. So, you, basically, keep all your logs in RAM! This means that VMkernel logs are wiped out every time you reboot hosts. Fortunately, guys at VMware came with some solution for keeping the logs — vCenter syslog collector.
Virtualization delivers a wide range of network tuning abilities. And, to ensure that your infrastructure performance is not bottlenecked with the networking you need to create a roadmap. By thinking carefully through your environment, you can avoid numerous common mistakes related to NICs and virtual interfaces utilization. All that mess leads one day to unpredictable time loss during host migration as there was no clear understanding of each network purposes.
So, come up with the road map, save yourself the hassle. Everything besides IPs and hosts names should be identical. You cannot use whatever adapter you want for the VMs. Everything depends on the guest OS and its version. So, if you want to dive deeper, just look through that article. Here, I talk only about three the most common network adapter options. Today, I discussed some things you need to consider while starting with VMware environments. Everything I wrote here reflects my viewpoint and nothing more than that.
Still, I just share here my experience, remember? Well, I hope this scribbling will be useful for you anyway. Good luck with VMware! Skip to content. Introduction If you are new to VMware or just starting out in the tech, you may feel a bit confused about products naming. Glossary I wish I wrote this article at the very beginning of my blog. Here are just a few names that were troublesome for me to tell apart: VMware — the company name.
VMware ESXi — the bare-metal hypervisor that virtualizes x86 server hardware. Local storage vs.
Because fere host represents the aggregate resources of a physical x86 server, if the physical x86 server has four dual-core CPUs vwmare at 4GHz each and 32GB of system memory, the host has 32GHz of computing power and 32GB of memory available for running virtual machines that are assigned to it. You will need to login with your VMware username. New April 19th, VirtualBox 6. Load a saved Snapshot by clicking the VM http://replace.me/7930.txt and then selecting Snapshot. If you have any questions for us?
By Priya Pedamkar. VMware provides cloud computing infrastructure and platform virtualization software and services. VMware is a publicly-traded company that provides mainly virtualization software. The meaning of virtualization is creating a virtual version of a device or any resource like an operating system. There are various products which are offered by VMware. Each one has a different kind of features and offerings. Each category mentioned above has multiple products which are offered by VMware.
One of the common categories from above which is used by individuals is Desktop virtualization. VMware Workstation falls into the category of Desktop Virtualization. By following this general guide, you will be able to install any software product offered by VMware. VMware Workstation was the first product launched by VMware. It is the most popular software that offers running multiple instances of operating systems on a single physical personal computer.
It enables users to set up and run multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine and allows to use them simultaneously along with the actual physical machine. Step 1. To download and install the VMware product visit the official website of VMware. We have chosen VMware Workstation Pro for installation demo purposes. VMware Workstation is available with the latest version as Step 2.
You will be redirected to the download page. Similarly, you can select any product which you want to install. Click on Download Now according to your Operating System. We have chosen Workstation 15 Pro for Windows. While downloading make sure you have a proper internet connection as the file may have a large size.
Step 3. Once the download is complete, run the. Popup will appear. Step 6. In the next screen, It will ask for some additional features, it is not mandatory to check this box. Click on Next. Step 7. On the next screen, some checkboxes are populated, Check them as per your requirement. Step 9. At this step, you can see installation taking place. The installation will take some time, wait for it to properly install. Step Once the installation gets completed you will see the following dialogue box.
Click on Finish. If you have purchased the product and have a license key, then you can click on License to enter the key. For the first time opening, if you have not entered the License key in step 7, then it will ask for a license key. You can go for the trial version which is available free for 15 to 30 days. Click on Continue. Make sure you have Admin rights for this in Windows. At this stage, you will get the final installation message.
This has been a guide on How to Install VMware?. You can also go through our other suggested articles to learn more —. By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Forgot Password? This website or its third-party tools use cookies, which are necessary to its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in the cookie policy. By closing this banner, scrolling this page, clicking a link or continuing to browse otherwise, you agree to our Privacy Policy.
Submit Next Question. Popular Course in this category. Course Price View Course. Free Software Development Course.
Login details for this Free course will be emailed to you.