Taking a queue from VCritical‘s VMware vCenter Server 4.0 installation video, following is a video showcasing the VMware ESX 4.0 GUI installation on HP Proliant DL385 server hardware with an AMD Opteron 280 dual core 64-bit processor, 4GB RAM, two internal 15kRPM SCSI drives, two onboard Gb NICs, and SAN attached storage via two fibre HBAs.

Points of interest in the video:

• The ESX 4.0 boot media is DVD ROM (not CD ROM).
• 9:03:23 F2 is pressed revealing the various kernel arguments tied to each of the embedded boot options.
• 9:05:03 Custom driver installation (NICs, HBAs, array controllers, etc.)
• 9:05:42 As in ESX 2.x, the ability to enter host based licensing at the console.
• 9:05:49 pNIC adapter selection reveals MAC address and connection state (both of which can be very useful).
• 9:05:57 A “Test these settings” button for the Service Console NIC
• 9:06:47 Detailed information is shown about SAN attached storage such as storage array type and fabric information.
• 9:06:58 Careful selection of the target installation disk spares the existing VMFS volumes on SAN attached storage from being formatted. Only the selected disk is initialized.
• 9:07:12 Choosing an existing or creating a new datastore to hold VMs and VMKernel swap. The volume created here did not appear to be block aligned.
• 9:07:44 VMware auto created partitioning. Not shown (hidden) is a 250MB /boot partition, 110MB vmkcore partition, and the VMFS volume the installer was instructed to create. VMware’s automatic partitioning schemes over the years don’t seem to follow best practices and lessons learned in the community and in some cases what their instructors teach in the classroom. I think it would help if VMware read the partitioning discussions on their forums or some of the books from the accomplished authors in the community. For instance, creating a mount point for /var/log instead of /var which can contain a subdirectory such as /var/xyz having large core dumps for 3rd party agents or products. I’m all for keeping things simple but not at the price of risking a virtual infrastructure component running 1, 10, or 100+ VMs. From what I’m seeing, manual partitioning is still needed in ESX 4.0 to be in alignment with best practices.
• 9:09:12 I purposely choose the incorrect date here merely to demonstrate that host names may be used in lieu of IP addresses for NTP Server selection. Upon entering the FQDN of an NTP server, the calendar snaps back to the correct date.
• 9:08:50 You probably just want to fast forward the video to the end. Nothing very exciting happens during the file copy process.
• 9:17:17 The file copy completes and the host is rebooted.
• 9:19:47 All SAN attached volumes are still in tact with data on them.

ESX 4.0 GUI Installation from Jason Boche on Vimeo.

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