I went to install the VMware SDK for vSphere 4.0 on to my desktop running Windows 7 64-bit, Visual Studio 2008, and .Net 3.5 SP1 and discovered the SDK setup is not friendly with these versions. According to VMware you need Visual Studio 2005 and .Net 2.0 if you want to run the SDK.
So like most of you reading this I turned to my trusted adviser…google to find the answer I was looking for. Much to my disappointment after 5 minutes of searching around I didn’t find any instant gratification for my problem so I decided to just go ahead and figure it out on my own.
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Categories: Other, Scriptng, VMware Tags: ESX 3.5, ESX4, ESXi, Installation, Script, scripting, SDK, vCenter, VI4, Virtual Center, VMware, VMware Workstation, vsphere
A little over a week ago, I was pleasantly surprised by an email from VMware announcing the release of VMware Workstation 7. Since I actively participated in the beta, they gave me a free license key for the new version. That’s reason enough to love it in itself! But, to be honest, I have been using VMware Workstation for quite some time now. I vaguely remember Y2K testing with it back when is was an IT pup. Since I got the fresh copy, I decided to completely redo my laptop with a fresh install of Winders 7 and all of my handy convenience programs (Office, TortoiseSVN, TweetDeck, FeedDemon, Firefox, Pandora, etc.). Since Winders 7 and IE8 have some compatability issues with some things, I decided to create a hybrid of what I did when I ran Ubuntu as the host OS. Since I was making things fresh, I created a Winders 2003 template then spawned a VM to host all of my favorite tools for VMware. I will most likely create spawns of the template for other things, like SAN tools. This gives me modules to do the job of the day and portability in case the host crashes.
So, let’s say I didn’t get a free copy of Workstation. What are the options? Would I be able to justify the $189 for it? Let’s look at some of the differences, starting with the free stuff: Read more…
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VMware Workstation 7 RC is available now. A while back, I posted about how to disable debug mode and quickly made it private because I was under NDA. Well, as of October 2nd, it is in RC and available to the public.
Since I changed jobs, I am back to a Winders laptop as my primary host. Its very convenient to spark up an Ubuntu VM to allow me the *NIX native commands I use when working with ESX Servers, like scp and ssh. I know I can do it with things like Putty, but I am more comfortable using Linux for these tasks. It makes editing bash and kickstart scripts a little easier too. It seems that Microsoft has made an OS that sucks less than Vista (Winders 7), but many of the simple .Net tools, like the vSphere Client, won’t work without stoopid tricks. So, I also have a stripped down XP VM that I keep updated with all of the kewl tools, like the VMware Clients, PowerCLI, vSphere CLI, The VESI, Converter, Capacity Planner, RVTools and the Host Update Utility. I actually created the VM back when Ubuntu was my primary laptop OS and it is nice to have the ability(and security) to take a snapshot before upgrading any of the tools or programs that I use. Someone once said that it adds extra layers when I am trying to do my job. But think about this: If my laptop takes a nosedive, regardless of the OS, I can just jump on any machine – even a netbook – and run the VM using VMware Player from a USB Stick.
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OK… I know the wonks at VMware will frown upon this one, but someone posted a similar hack for WS 6.5 beta, so here it is for WS 7.0 beta. I finally got around to installing the beta code this morning and immediately saw a performance issue. VMware Workstation Beta runs in debug mode by default. It can seriously slow down your VMs. If you are playing with vSphere and ESX/ESXi 4.0 inside a VM, it is horribly slow once you get to the VM inside of the VM. This is actually part of the testing VMware would like you to perform while using the beta.
For Linux, you will find the files in /usr/lib/vmware/bin. For Winders, they are probably somewhere in %PROGRAMS%. I usually stick to Linux for my host.
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