Each vmware product is considerably different from the others. Even vmware ESX which is a Red Hat fork and vmware server2 for linux are considerably different. I can't say how similar server2 for windows and server2 for linux are. I'm willing to guess that they have the same web interface at least. But maybe not. Anyway, if you're looking for tips, you'd probably have to decide on which vmware product you're going to try. I have no experience with vmware fusion or vmware workstation. But below are my comments on the 2 vmware products I have used, ESX and server2 for linux. I found considerable accessibility problems with the administrative interface for both ESX and server2 for linux. Installation of ESX was made difficult by a graphical splash screen. Once you're past that, a serial console install is possible. I sent vmware a bug report and they replied that they will look into it for the next version. So it may even be fixed by now. Then there's the vm infrastructure client. This is a Windows program that you use to control/configure virtual machines. I use jaws and as far as I know, there are no jaws scripts for it. Usually I just let my sighted co-worker deal with it. But last week we had an emergency and I had to restart a virtual machine. I managed to do it but it wasn't easy. And I never did figure out how to get to the console of the virtual machine. I was able to bring up the console and I'm assuming there was something to see there. But jaws didn't find anything it could read to me. Fortunately, the machine came up but if I'd had to do something at the console I wouldn't have been able to. With the linux version of server2, the install was a breeze. It's all done at the command line. And once you get a virtual machine set up, it's not too bad. Jaws doesn't work but nvda does. I've been told Windo-eyes works too. The real problem is configuring a virtual machine. I tried windows/jaws/ie, windows/jaws/firefox, windows/nvda/ie, linux/orca/firefox, and mac/safari/voiceover and by far the best combo was windows/jaws/ie. I was able to configure a virtual machine eventually but it took a lot of experimentation. I had to click around on the admin pages on words that weren't recognized as links by jaws. I would click on something and then listen to the entire page again to see if it did anything. But eventually I did manage to get a virtual machine configured. Then I installed Windows via the open source project called "unattended". See http://unattended.sourceforge.net. Maybe some other people have Windows installation tricks that I don't know. In the end, I managed to create a Windows virtual machine in vmware server2 completely without sighted assistance although it took me about a month of evenings and weekends to do it. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Granados" <scott@granados-llc.net> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 8:34 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] hi and is this list still active

Well I'm interested in pointers on setting up VMWare and using JFW in conjunction with vmware. It's not something I've ever played around with but I have literally a pile (about 100 servers) that I'm firing up and figured it was worth trying since I'm going in to the dedicated hosting game. There's my opener.;)

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 3:00 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] hi and is this list still active

Hi,

Yes is still active, we need to drum up some topics!

Though due to the low messages, it is quite a useful list.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Scott Granados Sent: 01 May 2009 05:03 To: blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] hi and is this list still active

I saw lots of messages in google but since I've subscribed it's been pretty dead. Is this list still active.

And hi! _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4047 (20090430) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins