vSphere 5.1 Lab – Initial Setup

With the release of vSphere 5.1 now, and some of the new features, I decided to dedicate a new series of posts just to 5.1, and install it all in my lab environment – from the ground up.

First off – this is a clean slate – I won’t be doing any upgrades – everything will be a fresh install.

Hardware:

HP ML330 G6

• 1 Xeon E5504 Quad Core
• 64 GB RAM
• 8x 300 GB SAS 15k in Raid 5

Since I am using a single server, I will be running mutiple nested ESXi servers. (See previous post – Creating a Nested ESXi 5 Environment)

Now onto the install:

Install ESXi 5.1:

This really is self explanatory anymore.  Insert CD, pres enter and F11 a couple of times – and you are good to go.  I did use the HP Customized image, since this is a HP server.

Prepare for Nested ESXi:

The steps are the same as with 5.0.

• echo ‘vhv.allow = “true” ‘ >> /etc/vmware/config
• Enable promiscuous mode on vswitch