Using an iso to create a VMware vmdk - vmware-server

Can anyone point me to some documentation about how I can use an Iso to create a Vmware environment.
For instance, there's this guy who made his own version of Ubuntu, with loads of extra programs added. Before I try this, I'm gonna test it using vmware server. But I'm kinda confused as to how to do this with only the ISO file.

Just create a new VM and attach the ISO into the virtual CD-ROM drive. You can do this when you create the VM. When you boot it, you will be able to install it as if you were doing it on a real machine.

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Install KaiOS on VMWare

I recently found this OS: http://www.kaios.org/. I was wondering how I can install it on VMWare Fusion. There is no .iso or .vmx that it comes with.
Please understand, I'm still learning about Linux and how it works. I'm using Mac if it makes any difference. Thank you!
KaiOS is a small operating system which isn't typically like a Linux distro which you are probably more familiar with. As a result it won't come with an installer or come on an .iso which you could load as an image into VMWare.
The KaiOS site documentation shows you how to boot the OS via PXE, which you could do with VMWare although would need to set up a PXE server VM as well as another VM which you would boot via PXE from the server you set up.
You won't be able to traditionally install this OS via loading an image unfortunately.
There is some documentation on PXE with VMWare here.

port linux created vm to windows

I have a problem using an, in linux created virtual machine in windows using virtualbox.
In windows I can start the virtual machine by using the created qcow2 file, but at the grub bootloader it just shows a black screen with a white underscore at the top left corner.
The vm was created with qemu in fedora20.
I installed the newest ubuntu server (64bit) on it.
What I want to do now is, to make it available for others, especially for windows users.
I tried it with virtualbox in a windows 8.1. It shows the behavior mentioned above.
I think there are some kinds of driver issues?
If more information is needed, please let me know.
Michael
I can only find that virtualbox imports .ova format files. You can use .vmdk files without conversion, but .qcow2 is not supported directly.
With the command line tool vboxmanage you have more conversion options for hard disks.
Looks like the best way is:
qemu-img convert -f qcow2 <qcow2_VM_filename> -O vdi <RAW_file_VM_filename>

How to install SmartOS in a Linux KVM instance?

I need to test a program on SmartOS. I don't have any spare systems lying around so I wanted to install it into a KVM image on my GNU/Linux distribution. I've installed Solaris 11 that way and that worked pretty well.
I downloaded the ISO and booted it inside KVM and the installation appeared to work fine. However when I boot the virtual machine it always starts to come up and says:
Booting from harddisk ...
and then it just sits there, with the virtual CPU pegged, and never proceeds any further. No key presses appear to do anything (except Ctrl-Alt-Del which starts the boot again, giving the same result).
I created my KVM from virt-manager with 2G RAM, 2 CPUs, 50G of disk space using a "raw" disk format, and selected "Solaris" / "OpenSolaris" as the OS type.
I don't have a copy of VMWare and it seems really expensive to get one for Linux, so I don't think using the SmartOS VMWare image is an option for me.
Anyone have any hints? Google shows me lots of information about creating Linux instances inside SmartOS KVMs, but nothing on doing it the other way.
I figured it out with some help from the mailing list. SmartOS is a PXE booting operating system: it doesn't actually install to the harddisk. When my installation was complete and the VM rebooted KVM automatically unmounted the ISO file from my virtual CDROM, so on boot it was looking for a PXE image to boot from and couldn't find it.
All I had to do was re-attach the ISO file to the virtual CDROM and it worked fine after that. Ugh.

Using a VMWare installation as a development webserver

Can anyone point me into the right direction to use a VMWare installation of Ubuntu or another Linux distro as a development server on my local machine?
I'm on a Windows 7 32bit machine and currently using WAMP.
I'm noticing some differences between developing on a windows machine and my deployment server and additionaly I'd like to expand my knowledge on working on linux using the command line.
Follow-up question, what would be the best way to develop on my local installation and push that development to my VPS that I'm renting?
I'd suggesting downloading a LAMP appliance from http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/0?k=lamp if you don't want to get into building your own, and running that on VMWare Player.
If you want to build your own, you could use VMWare Server, Oracle VirtualBox or any other Virtualization software. Create a New VM, with 512MB or RAM, and 4GB (+ the requirements of your tools + a buffer of 2GB) of disk. I recommend 10GB, or you could set it up for maybe 50GB and let the virtual disk grow as needed rather than allocating all the space up front.
Then, download the Ubuntu Server 12.04 ISO file from http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server , and use it as the CD Drive to boot your VM. Follow the on-screen instructions to install. And at the end, select the options to install the LAMP configuration.
Note: Using Ubuntu's server edition means you don't get any GUI.

VMWare ESX image to run on VMWare workstation

I've an linux image(debian) running on VMWare ESX 3.1.
Is it possible to copy that image and run it locally on my local VMWare workstation?
how?
Just open up the VI client, shut down the VM, browse to the datastore and then download the image. Pretty straightforward really, I do it from ESXi 3.5 -> Workstation 6.5 all the time.
I believe that while ESX (commercial) is reverse-compatible to Server (free), Server is NOT forward-compatible to ESX.
Therefore, you can import Server images to ESX, but not the other way around.
You may be able to go from an ESX host to an ESXi (free) host, however.
As far as I remember that was exactly what I did a few weeks ago. I exported the image (export facility is included in the ESX, but you'll have to power off the image while you export it). Once the image was exported I ran it through the VMware converter (free tool) and converted it to run on a workstationr/player.
However my laptop always crashes when I install VMWorkstation so I run it om a VMPlayer.
We also have such an environment and are working on it since past 5 years. We have ESXi 3.5 virtualized environment running Centos OS virtual machines amongst others. To use the virtual machine from ESXi on our local machine, we have installed VMWare Workstation (also VMWare Player). We take a complete mondo backup using mondoarchive. We then transfer these images on our local machine. From these images, we restore the ESXi based virtual machine in our local VMWare Workstation environment. It has been a great success for last five years and we have never faced any problem with it.
Kasper, what version of ESX are you running? Trying to export an image from our ESX server always ends in a I/O error (don't have access to the server right now so I cannot remember the exact error message).
Would love to get this feature working but I not found anything on the web that might help with this specific error.
You can also user Vizioncore vConverter or FastSCP for your migration.
This is a nice article describes how to convert different images: Please go throught it.
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/vmware-converter.html

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