A tutorial on installing and configuring a guest … tutorial on installing and configuring a guest...
Transcript of A tutorial on installing and configuring a guest … tutorial on installing and configuring a guest...
A tutorial on installing and configuring a guest machine using VMware Workstation 9 in Windows Environment
INTRODUCTION
VMware is proprietary software for creating virtual machine. It’s a way of installing an
operating system inside an operating system virtually. The hardware like hard disk, memory
and processor can be inherited form the physical system. We can also call VMware as a
hypervisor. Hypervisor is a piece of software program that is used to create, manage and run
virtual machines. A computer on which hypervisor is running is called host machine. The
virtual machine runs on the hypervisor is called guest machine. VMware is a type 2 hosted
hypervisor. To work with VMware we need a Windows or Linux installed machine. VMware
runs on top of the host operating system, hence it is called as hosted architecture.
Figure 1: VMware Workstation Hosted Architecture
Full virtualization is the technology used by VMware workstation. With Full Virtualization
as the guest OS is fully abstracted (completely decoupled) from the underlying hardware by
the virtualization layer. The guest OS is not aware it is being virtualized and requires no
modification. Full virtualization is the only option that requires no hardware assist or
operating system assist to virtualize sensitive and privileged instructions. It is possible to
install Windows, Unix and Mac operating system in VMware. First we need to configure host
machine with VMware Workstation. We can download VMware Workstation setup from
vmware.com as 30 days trail and the actual cost is 250$. The installation doesn’t need any
configuration even a naïve user can install it by just opening the setup and clicking next. The
home screen of VMware workstation is shown in the figure below.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Operating System: Windows 7
Software: VMware Workstation
CPU: Intel Core i3
Memory: 4Gb and above
Hard Disk: 1*80Gb HDD @ 5400rpm
Steps to Install and Configuring Guest Machine
Step 1: The left pane displays the available virtual machines created using VMware and the
right pane used to create and configure virtual machine. In the right pane, the icons
simply explain all the futures. To create a new virtual machine click the icon “Create
a New Virtual Machine”.
Step 2: The wizard opens and asks the user with typical or custom to create a virtual machine.
In typical the VMware itself detect and allocate resources for the guest operating
system. For advanced configuration we need to select custom and click next.
Step 3: Select virtual machine compatibility as workstation 9 which supports most of the
modern operating system till windows 8. If you experienced the operating system
compatible with specific versions of VMware workstation just select form the drop
down list box.
Step 4: To create a virtual machine we must need an installation media like windows or
Linux disk. VMware offers us with two types of media selection. Either we can
install it from physical disk or we can use iso image downloaded from the internet. If
you haven’t planned for installation media select “I will install the operating system
later” and click next.
Step 5: Now it’s time to select the type of guest operating system Linux, Windows, Mac or
Solaris. VMware optimises the hardware according to the guest operating system.
Now we are going to install Ubuntu a flavour of Linux operating system. Select
Linux and in the version select Ubuntu 64bit and click Next.
Step 6: Name your virtual machine. The name is used to identify your virtual machine in the
left pane. To store virtual machine configuration files and virtual hard disk in desired
location select the path by clicking the browse button.
Step 7: Host computer consist of single Intel or AMD processor chip which has many cores
and many threads running on that CPU. We can assign CPU to virtual machines in
terms of cores and threads. Thread means concurrent execution on a processor core.
A typical Intel i3 chip has 2 cores and 4 threads. 4 threads can run on a single core of
Intel i3 chip. As the total processor increases, the processing speed of guest
operating system also increases. Assigning many cores to guest system reduces the
speed of execution in host system.
In VMware the number of processor is related to core.
The number of core per processor related to thread run concurrently on a single core.
Step 8: Slide the ruler to assign the amount of memory (RAM) for guest machine. Usually
Linux systems don’t require much amount of memory. Before installing a guest
operating system read the prerequisite and minimum system requirement and
allocate configuration according to the specification.
Step 9: VMware offers user with three types of networking. Bridged network, Network
Address Translation (NAT) and Host only Network. Bridged network configured
guest machine gets IP address form router, currently the host machine is connected.
The virtual machine is explicitly visible over the network. We can ping the system
with its IP address. Network address translation (NAT) is different from bridged
network where the IP address is provided by VMware workstation. The guest
machine’s network request is transfer to host machine and the host machine serves
the guest machine. The guest machine invisible over the network and users cannot
ping the guest machine. The guest is only visible to host machine. Host only
networking is used to communicate with number of guest machines only. We can
also have two or more network adapters with different configurations.
Step 10: To access the virtual disks, a virtual machine uses virtual SCSI controllers. Each
virtual disk that a virtual machine can access through one SCSI controllers. The
choice of controller does not affect the virtual hard disk type like SCSI or IDE.
Step 11: We have to create virtual hard disk for the storage of virtual machines. We can add
two or more hard disk or we can also use the existing virtual hard disk. VMware
offers an option to mount virtual hard disk as a physical media and explore its
content. Windows can only view the file system formatted with NTFS or FAT32.
Most of the Linux file systems are ext3 and ext4. Click Next to proceed further.
Step 12: Select the technology used to connect the hard disk. Usually host and other are
connected with hard disk using IDE or SATA interface. SCSI is advanced
technology which is most recommended because of the performance in data
transfer.
Step 13: Specify the size of the hard disk. Allocate disk space now will occupy all the given
space form the physical media. Store virtual disk as a single file, pile up all the data
as a single *.vmdk file (virtual hard disk). If the memory of the file is too large it is
difficult to transfer form one system to another. Split virtual disk into multiple files
can omit this bottleneck.
Step 14: Enter the name of the virtual hard disk.
Step 15: Review the configuration of the virtual machine and click finish.
Step 16: We can see the virtual machine is added in the left pane. To further edit the virtual
machine click “Edit Virtual Machine Settings “.
Step 17: We haven’t add the installation disk before. Now browse and locate the iso as an
installation media.
Step 18: To add one or more hardware components click add to open “Add Hardware
Wizard” window. Select the component and click next to configure the particular
hardware. The component will be added to the guest operating system.
Step 19: The execution of the guest operating system inside the VMware hypervisor is shown
in the figure. We can suspend, stop and resume the virtual machine by simple
clicking close button on the particular tab. We can also make it full screen by
clicking the icon in the toolbar.
Step 20: VMware provided with a feature called snapshot. User can take a snapshot of a guest
operating system and can revert back to the particular point. Snapshot can be
managed by using snapshot manager. Snapshots are mostly used in testing
environment.
POINTS TO REMEMBER
1. VMware is proprietary software.
2. VMware Workstation is available for both Windows and Unix environment.
3. For the execution of Guest machine, hardware resource can be inherited from Host
machine.
4. Allocating more resources to Guest machine reduces the performance of Host
machine and leads to system crash.
Document Experimented and
Created by Arunkumar Goge [email protected] www.facebook.com\arunkumargoge @arunkumargoge