LincolnBlogs

CentOS 5.x makes a great VM server. Here’s a quick recipe to make it happen:

First, install CentOS, which is an enterprise class Linux distribution that is basically a rebadged/rebranded RedHat, compiled from sources with a few tweaks. I did the generic server only install. After the install, make sure to do all your updates! (yum update)

Once that is done, head on over to VMware’s site and pick up the VMware Server 2. As far as I am concerned, VMware stil has the corner on the market for machine virtualization. There are plenty of other products out there, but I have done a *lot* of virtualization with VMware and it’s rock solid, and it’s free version has a really great price point for what it provides too! Sign yourself up and pick up the free server rpm and make sure to get your registration code as well.

Once that is done, the rest is easy:
Log in as root.
yum groupinstall “Development Libraries”
yum groupinstall “Development Tools”
yum install kernel-devel xinetd
rpm -Uvh VMware-server-2.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Run the perl config script that the RPM install will tell you about and pick the default settings (worked for me anyway). That’s it!

Point your firefox browser to https://yourCentOSserver:8333 and login using your root account and password.

One thing to note as you start creating VM’s is you may need to have access to iso images to do installs from. Place them into your /var/lib/vmware/Virtual\ Machines/ directory and you’ll be able to find them in your vmware datastore.