The professional blog of Christopher Randel

A few notes about vmware

After a few months more experience, I’d like to share a few more interesting tidbits about vmware server. This is probably no new news to anyone who is half an expert with it, but since I’m fairly new at it, I thought they were interesting.

Summary:

1. VMware images between different products aren’t compatible, and trying to start vmware fusion images in vmware server makes the web-interface dump. [VMware Host Agent]

2. There is a converter utility available here which will convert images between various vmware products. Works slick as shit, designed for large scale with work que, etc.

3. Intel 64 bit capable processors that don’t support “Intel Virtualization Technology” can’t run 64 bit clients, but can run 64 bit operating systems. Doing this with a linux guest will produce an error message to the tune of it basically saying the client is a 64bit install running on a 32 bit machine, and will never successfully boot up. I ran into this on the machine I was working on here

Vmware has a converter that lets you migrate images from the different vmware products. Lately I’ve been converting vmware fusion images to vmware server images, only takes a few minutes and is pretty painless. So how did I come across this? I tried to start up a vmware fusion 2.0 images in vmware server 2.0. It more or less totally barfed. The http interface service crashed in windows, and I had to restart that in the services mmc.

Later on I tried to start a 64 bit ubuntu images with a simple site, on the machine I referenced in my earlier post here only to go into the console to find the machine not properly booted, stuck on an error message:

This kernel requires an x86-64 CPU, but only detected an i586 CPU.
Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU.

After some research, I found the E4600 chip the server is using does not support Intel’s “Virtualization Technology” – VT. Link
So, we’re dropping the 175$ for a Intel Xeon 3310 2.4ghz quad-core, and doing a chip swap. I wonder how Server 2008 will take that. Will probably want to reactivate. >:

Edit: Note that if you’re using vmware server, and can’t get to the web interface in windows 7 [or possibly vista], try adding your domain name URL to “trusted sites” in IE.