Luke Sheldrick's Blog » VMWare Server

Native VNC Server – VMWare Server

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:55:45 +0000

Randomly discovered a nice feature of VMWare products, the in-built VNC Server. I quick look at their KB reveals http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=1246 as being listed for GSX server, however happily works for me on VMWare Server 2.0 (Haven’t tried on 1.0, just yet, but will do later).

Quite simple really, edit the Guest’s VMX file in question and add the following [changing to suite your needs] to the bottom of the file.

RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = “TRUE”

The below are optional, but recommended.
RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = “5900″
RemoteDisplay.vnc.password = “vncpassword”

With the 5900, change the 00, to whatever you please, if you have multiple guests running for example. The 00, will become vnc screen ’0′ and 01, would become ’1′….etc

Quite a nice feature, so I don’t have to [1] Use a vnc server on each of the guests + firewall rules for them [2] I don’t have to run fusion on my mac, to boot an XP guest, just becuase there isn’t a plugin for OSX + VMWare Console [for 2.0 :@ not that I know of anyways, please shout if you know of one though]

Vlan trunking on VMWare Server (1.x 2.x)… Continued

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:09:16 +0000

Thought I’d write a quick update, as I had received a comment to my previous post regarding vlan trunking on VMWare Server.

The comment “Hi, Luke
How it does works in VMWare Server 2.0. on the Web Admin interface it doesn’t appear on network list, only physical NICs ”

Well to be honest off hand I couldn’t remember, I always downgrade / use 1.x, as I can’t stand the web interface. However re-installed it back in the lab. At first glance, you can’t add interfaces to the host via the web gui, which blows.

Anyways, running “Managed Virtual Networks”, gives you back the original interface:

Then adding in the interfaces, including the BAS #* (For broadcom individual interfaces / vlans).

Then a quick network refresh in the gui, and all the NIC’s, including the virtual vlan nics, show in the gui

Now back to 1.0.7

Vlan trunking on VMWare Server (1.x 2.x)

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:22:52 +0000

Someone was telling me the other day how they’d setup vlan trunking on the linux server, using the 802.1q kernel module, and then binding the ‘virtual’ interfaces to the vmnet’s. This wasn’t something I’d thought about before, as I’d gone a different route (sticking a few 4 port nics) in my servers, which also meant I didn’t have the bandwidth limitation. However this was all on a linux server, so is pretty straight forward.

I was rather bored on the grave yard shift last night, and needed an extra vlan on my lab vmhost at home, so set off to see how easy it is to do under Windows 2003, which my vmhost is currently built as. My lab server in question is a HP xw6000, so comes with the Broadcom NetXtreme chipset. Looking around they have a suite you can install, BACS (Broadcom Advance Control Suite). This allows you to setup virtual interfaces, which the OS (and VMWare) just see as being an additional nic.

So all I needed to do is setup the switch port as a trunk, on my Cisco C2948 in the lab, add the vlans I wanted to BACS, and then assign the new nics to a vmnet. All is working quiet well.

Also tried it on a Intel PRO nic, with equally pleasing results. A few pic’s below:

Luke Sheldrick's Blog » VMWare Server

Native VNC Server – VMWare Server

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