VMware Workstation - No Experience Necessary

Table of Contents

VMware Workstation – No Experience Necessary

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Installing VMware Workstation

Configuring the host computer

CPU and CPU cores

Memory

Disk space

Getting VMware Workstation

Purchasing VMware Workstation

Setting up your VMware account

Installing VMware Workstation on Windows

Installing VMware Workstation on Linux

Starting VMware Workstation for the first time

Summary

2. Installing Virtual Machines

Before you start

Starting the installation

RAM and CPU

Networking

Disk options

Installing a Windows 8 virtual machine

Installing a Linux virtual machine

Summary

3. Working with Virtual Machines

Performing common tasks

Working with hardware

Booting your virtual machine from a CD-ROM

Modifying virtual hardware

Working with shared folders

Setting virtual machine options

Automatic snapshots

Time synchronization

VNC connections

Securing virtual machines

Summary

4. VMware Workstation behind the Scenes

Understanding VMware Workstation files

VMware Workstation program files and services

Program files on Windows hosts

Program files on Linux hosts

VMware services

Working with VMware Workstation files

VMware Workstation virtual machine definition files

VMware Workstation disk files

Configuring advanced storage

Using devices as virtual machine disks

Mounting virtual disk files

Managing VMware virtual disks

Summary

5. Networking VMware Workstation

Using different networking modes

Using bridged networking

Using NATted networking

Using host-only networking

Configuring virtual networks

Setting bridged network properties

Setting host-only network properties

Setting NAT network properties

Creating your own virtual network

Using advanced network properties on virtual machines

Setting advanced network properties on virtual machines

Using multiple network cards within a virtual machine

Summary

6. Accessing Virtual Machines Remotely

Setting up shared machines with the VMware Web Service

Shared virtual machines and user accounts

Creating a Windows user account

Creating a Linux user account

Sharing a virtual machine

Accessing a shared virtual machine

Using VNC for remote virtual machine access

Enabling VNC access on a virtual machine

Connecting remotely to virtual machines using VNC

Using TeamViewer for remote access through a firewall

Installing the TeamViewer agent

Using the TeamViewer client

Accessing VMware Workstation from tablets and mobile devices

Summary

7. Converting Virtual Machines

Converting physical machines to VMware Workstation

Virtualizing a physical Windows machine with VMware Converter

Performing a physical-to-virtual conversion of computers running Linux

Performing a V2V conversion and virtual machine import

Importing raw image files into VMware Workstation

Importing VMDK files into VMware Workstation

Importing other disk file formats into VMware Workstation using OVF

Importing third-party virtual machines using VMware vCenter Converter

Summary

8. Cloning and Snapshots

Understanding when to apply which tools

Working with snapshots

Creating snapshots

Reverting a snapshot

Using autoprotect snapshots

Snapshots and powering off

Working with the Snapshot Manager

Creating clones

Preparing virtual machines before cloning

Using Sysprep on Windows to create a template

Backups in a virtual environment

Summary

9. Sharing Virtual Machines

Uploading virtual machines to vSphere and the cloud

Making virtual machines ready for vSphere

Uploading virtual machines to vSphere

Sharing virtual machines with VMware Player

Preparing to move virtual machines to VMware Player

Starting a copied virtual machine for the first time

Using VMware appliances

Making screen movies

Summary

Index

VMware Workstation – No Experience Necessary

VMware Workstation – No Experience Necessary

Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: August 2013

Production Reference: 1160813

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-84968-918-2

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Duraid Fatouhi (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Author

Sander van Vugt

Reviewers

Sean Duffy

Frederik Vos

Acquisition Editors

Andrew Duckworth

Julian Ursell

Commissioning Editor

Sharvari Tawde

Technical Editors

Vrinda Nitesh Bhosale

Pratik More

Copy Editors

Gladson Monteiro

Insiya Morbiwala

Alfida Paiva

Laxmi Subramanian

Project Coordinator

Amey Sawant

Proofreader

Jenny Blake

Indexer

Tejal Soni

Graphics

Ronak Dhruv

Production Coordinator

Arvindkumar Gupta

Cover Work

Arvindkumar Gupta

About the Author

Sander van Vugt is an independent author, consultant, and technical trainer, living in Netherlands. He is specialized in open source software and virtualization. He has written over 50 books on many subjects, most of them about Linux. As a consultant he has realized numerous projects involving open source software and virtualization for different companies around the world. You can find more information about him on his website, www.sandervanvugt.com.

About the Reviewers

Sean Duffy is a virtualization evangelist, programmer, and general technical enthusiast living in the South West of England. He has worked in the virtualization and cloud computing space since circa 2007, garnering an appreciation and enjoyment of the technologies surrounding these industries.

Thriving off of helping others, Sean enjoys sharing knowledge around the technical topics he is most enthused about. Over the last five years he has run a blog, Shogan.tech, discussing ideas, projects, and technical articles covering topics such as Virtualization, Scripting, and Automation. He is also an author on the popular technical journal and community hub website, Simple-Talk, and runs a second blog dedicated to his passion for creating games and programming.

He holds various Virtualization and Cloud certifications, and has been awarded the title VMware vExpert for the years 2012 and 2013.

Sean is currently working as a Technical Consultant for Xtravirt Limited in the United Kingdom, where he enjoys exposure to many different technologies across the Virtualization, Cloud and End User Computing stacks.

I would like to thank my wife, Carmen for her support and patience over the years I have spent chasing my passion for technology.

Frederik Vos, living in Berkenwoude, a small town near Gouda in Netherlands, has been working as a senior technical trainer of virtualization technologies, such as Citrix XenServer, and VMware vSphere. He has specialized in data center infrastructures (hypervisor, network, and storage) and cloud computing (cloudstack, cloudplatform, and openstack). He is also a Linux trainer and evangelist. He has a lot of knowledge as a teacher and also real-world experience as a system engineer.

For the last six years Frederik is working for XTG in Gouda, a training-center specialized in virtualization and Linux. XTG is one of the biggest VMWare authorized training center (VATC) in Netherlands, and has received several awards from both VMware and Citrix.

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Preface

VMware is the world leader in virtualization solutions. VMware offers products to virtualize the data center, and also solutions that help you set up test environments. This book is about VMware Workstation, the most versatile solution that can be used to set up a test environment to develop new software solutions, or to test complex architecture before taking it into production.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Installing VMware Workstation, explains how to install VMware Workstation on Windows or Linux computers. It also describes the recommended hardware to set up a virtualization environment.

Chapter 2, Installing Virtual Machines, describes what to do before even starting the installation of the first virtual machine, such as setting up storage or networking. It also explains how to create different types of virtual machines.

Chapter 3, Working with Virtual Machines, shows you how to get around and perform some of the most common tasks in VMware Workstation as VMware Workstation offers several options to make it