Help with a test server

Guest2

Guest2

Guest2

Soldato
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I have an HP Proliant DL120 G5 server for testing with VMware Server on Server 2003 standard. At the moment I have wiped it and it shows 2 disks of 150GB

I have pressed F6 to go to install 3rd party RAID drivers then it points to floppy drive A, I have plugged in a USB floppy drive but cannot find the drivers

Could someone please point me in the right direction. I have never setup Raid like this before or VMware server.

As its only going to be a test server so I could get Server 2003 on one of the drives without RAID but it defeats the object of having two disks. However the drives are not hot swappable either, so i wont even know if one dies.

edit - I know some people say the HP smartstart cds are a way of nannying a raid install but i have only done it that way before (and only once) so some help with the 'proper' raid setup way would be useful

Thanks
 
Saundie said:
Although it's a Dell tool, you could try their USBKeyPrepF6 utility. It will allow you to emulate a floppy drive using a USB flash drive; it's how I installed Server 2003 on my Dell servers that lack physical floppy drives.
Click to expand...

This is the stage im at. I press F6 then it asks for 3rd party raid drivers off a floppy drive (which is plugged into a front usb port)




Venares said:
As for the raid drivers, you cant use a usb floppy unfortunatly.
The only way will be to boot off the smartstart cd and select OS install and have it inject the drivers for you.
Click to expand...

The G5 does not support smartstart unfortunately



Venares said:
As your going to be using VMWare on the server, why not just build the VM server first and then install 2003 as a VM. No need for raid drivers then.
VMWare is the easiest thing to install ever, just pop the CD in, let it boot and follow the prompts.
Just take the defaults for everything and when it asks give it a name and IP address.
Once its done just use a web browser on another machine and browse to the servers IP address and download the managment client from the link provided.

If you need any more help just shout :D
Click to expand...

So far I have just tested VMware workstation on a single machine. I have downloaded the VMWare server exe install and planned on installing Server 2003 (with Raid 1) then running this binary on top of Server 2003. Sorry, I dont know what you mean by 'build the VM Server first.

I know VMware ESX Server can be installed straight onto hardware without and OS but I think it would be easier to get it installed onto 2003, atleast then other things can be put onto the server if needed or we dont go ahead with VMware. I dont have a CD for VMware, just the installer from the VMware site

Thanks for the help guys/girls
 
unp|dissy said:
You NEED to press f6 for the raid drivers to have the raid working correctly.

I'm assuming you've two sata disks on a raid card? Or you motherboard has raid compatibility build in ?

Either way you're going to need the raid drivers for your card / mobo.

gl..
Click to expand...

Done that, as in my first thread...

'I have pressed F6 to go to install 3rd party RAID drivers then it points to floppy drive A, I have plugged in a USB floppy drive but cannot find the drivers'

I cannot find the drivers for the Proliant DL120 G5
 
I got the drivers (some other 32bit ones instead of 64bit) extracted them to floppy drive, followed instructions - F6, S then 'When the HP Embedded SATA RAID driver is found, press Enter. Follow the remaining on-screen instructions to complete your installation.'

It just continued to the install screen where i was at before with 2 logical drives shown. Do i need to F8 or Ctrl & A into bios to create an array before doing this?
 
unp|dissy said:
Make RAID 1 array with bios tool (F8 / CTRL+A ON BOOT)
Click to expand...

How do I get into the BIOS?? I hammer the Ctrl+A and F8 keys and it goes straight into windows setup

edit - i get the following when i turn the server on

White screen with PXE boot, escape to cancel to boot
Ctrl + S to get to setup (this is to change from PXE boot)
configuting mac address
No operating system found

:confused:
 
Last edited:
HP screen had escape, F10 for ROM bios, F12 for PXE bios. I tried F10 and its the normal bios (just didnt know it was called ROM bios) SATA RAID was disabled in there. Enabled it and then booted to RAID setup with F8.

Its building the RAID 1 array now.

Thanks for help all. I'll probably be opsting back here soon if I have problems installing 2003 on the array or problems installing VMWare Server
 
VMWare Server is now installed on RAID 1.

When I go to the shortcut 'VMware Server Home Page' I 'page cannot be displayed' message

It trys to go here (mahcine name is 'vmware')

https://vmware:8333/ui/

I have gone into connection and enabled VM Ware bridge protocol on the 2 default connections VMnet1 and VMnet8

I left all port numbers etc on default settings when installing

edit - in the lower right i have vwmare server web access, under the startup tab, this is the working path
C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\tomcat
 
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firewall is off, i can ping it

I tried this and it does something different but comes up with a message about unsupported broswer or javascript needed.

http://vmware:8308/ui/

Im installing SP2 at the moment and latest javascript

Thanks

this message...

---------------

VMware Infrastructure Web Access will not work unless your browser supports JavaScript.

Please ensure that you are using a compatible browser and that JavaScript is enabled.

Try Again

---------------
 
back again! I now have my vmserver installed and have got into the web console. I ran windows update and got new ie etc

This is the address it goes to

https://panvmware:8333/ui

I have created a virtual machine (VM001) and turned it on through the console. How do i now connect to it to install a guest operating system? I selected Windos XP 32bit when creating it

When i go to the virtual machines tab and select VM001 i have options to power off, suspend and reset

In the manual it says the following...

To install a guest operating system from an installation CD
1 Log in to VI Web Access.
2 Select the virtual machine into which you are installing the guest operating system
from the Inventory panel.
3 Insert the installation CD for your guest operating system.
4 In the Hardware section of the Summary tab, click the CD/DVD drive’s icon and
select Edit.

Where abouts is this hardware section inside the summary tab?

Thanks

edit - ignore that, found it now, i just needed to add it to the inventory. Next task is trying to get the guest OS installed, i have connected a usb cd drive with XP in and it show its found it in the console 'LD super RW' but boots from PXE rom then says no operating system found. On the LG drive the option to connect is greyed out

edit2 - also, when i create a shortcut for my virtual machine it works on the server i have vmware server on but on my mahcine the address doesnt work. This is the link

https://vmware:8333/ui/?wsUrl=http:...o=VirtualMachine|16&inventory=none&tabs=hide_

update - I have my virtual machine installing now from ISO for XP. Just to work out how to use the generated links
 
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sorted the generated links. I just turned windows firewall off. onto the next step... install a server 2003 virtual machine then clone it

2003 now install and ran clone zilla from an ISO on boot.

I get to the part where its about to clone and it says something like "cannot run clonezilla off a mounted disk"

any clues?
 
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Update...

scrapped clonezilla off and got R-Drive image. Will clone to image on portable then run from startup, it looks a lot easier and definately supports raid 5

I have also downloaded vCenter, vSphere and VMWare ESXi. I'll stick vCenter and vSphere on the test server and use a workstation as a server with ESXi on. I have a feeling its going to be a bit more complicated setting this up that it was to set up VMWare Server standard (using vCenter to link all the physical servers together to make a cluster pool of servers etc)
 
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