Introduction

This article will cover installing VMWare Virtual Server 2.0 on Windows Home Server and setting up guest operating systems.  Part 1 covered the steps in upgrading the hardware in an HP MediaSmart Server EX490 to deal with virtualisation.

You will need a copy of VMWare Server 2.0.2, a License Key (given for free after a no-fee registration with VMWare.com) and Remote Desktop Access to you Windows Home Server.

Got VMWare?

In the last paragraphs of the previous article on turning your HP MSS EX49x into a Virtual Server I said it was a good idea to get hold of VMWare Server 2.0.  You can download it by following this link and going through the download steps or by navigating the huge menus at VMWare.com.  You will have to register with VMWare but you get the option to opt out of emails if you won’t be interested in the odd email about Virtualisation and Cloud Computing.  The download is 507MB and I advise you go through VMWare’s Download Manager.  The version you need to get is VMWare Server 2.0.2 (10/26/2009) – it’s the first version under the Binaries heading, be careful not to download the Linux version or the API instead.  On this same page is the only time you will be given the licensing information for VMWare Server.  I suggest saving this page or making a copy of the License Key somewhere safe – keys are provided for both Linux and Windows versions.  As always I recommend you use a Client PC to do the actual download and move the file to your Windows Home Server Software Share once you have virus scanned the executable.

Introduction

This article is based around upgrading the hardware in an HP MediaSmart Server EX490.  Later articles will cover installing VMWare Virtual Server 2.0 and guest operating systems.

Say What?

There are a lot of articles and posts on the internet showing you how to run Windows Home Server in a virtual environment.  I did consider turning my EX490 into a Virtual Server using VMWare ESXi (the enterprise Virtualisation solution) but because I would severely lose out on important storage characteristics with regard to the ability of hot swapping and expanding the virtual disk datastore I decided against it.  Long before ESX (and ESXi) though was Virtual Server from VMWare supporting a more traditional approach of an application layer on top of the operating system – as opposed to installing a Hypervisor on top of bare metal (the machine itself with no underlying operating system).  Anyway this is not a lesson of which is best or why use virtualisation, I assume if you are reading this then you are familiar with Wikipedia for definitions and are interested in taking advantage of your ‘always on’ home server.