John: You do need a Windows machine to run the VIC. There's a web interface, but its inaccessible, and not full featured anyway so sighted people don't use it. VMWare wants to change that, and maybe they will. To be honest, if you want to learn about Windows system administration, I'd recommend VMWare's Workstation product. Its not free, but its worth it. I build most of my labs there, and has a lot of really advanced features you won't find in player. For example, you can snapshot a VM at a specific point, try something, then revert the VM to the snapshot again and try something else. You can create linked clones so you can make one VM that's a base image, then a second VM that only uses enough disk space as new data. So as you can see I'm a fan and highly recommend it. It does have versions for Linux and Windows, but I recommend just putting Windows on the box and running the Windows version, I don't know how accessible the Linux version is. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of John G. Heim Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 7:42 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] vm on console in esxi Well, the problem is that I built this quad-core machine with the intention of learning something about Windows systems admin. I thought I'd create some Windows virtual machines and try networking them. I installed esxi on it as a way to learn about VMWare at the same time. But I don't have a Windows machine to run the VIC on. I'm using a borrowed machine. So I really need to find a way to use my quad-core machine as a workstation. I thought I had gone about as far as I could go with esxi so I was intending to install linux and try VMWare player. I actually had a debian installation CD in my hand ready to wipe out esxi when I decided to wait a little longer. Then we had that discussion earlier this week and I realised I could still learn a lot about esxi. So I don't know what to do now. I have to give up this Windows machine pretty soon and use my own machine as my primary workstation. Maybe its not so bad though because right now, my department has like a hundred dual-boot machines. I would like to make them linux machines with Windows available as a virtual machine. -----Original Message----- From: Ryan Shugart Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 6:58 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] vm on console in esxi John: I've not played with ESXI 5.0 but I don't think so. You need to use the VIC either connected to the host directly or to Virtual Center. Also I don't think a startup script will work to start the VM. ESXI doesn't have the same Linux functionality as ESX does, and there is no ESX 5.0. However, there is a VM startup/shutdown policy that will do this. In the VIC, select the host in the treeview, go to configuration, and use your mouse to find the entry under the software section. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of John Heim Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 1:51 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] vm on console in esxi Can I use a virtual machine at the console on a esxi 5.0 host? I was thinking what I could do is put a command to start the vm in a startup script so that when I powered up the host, it would come up with a virtual machine running on the console. I already know that I can get speech via a USB headset connected to the host. _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins