In our previous Vmware home lab esxi setup, we installed Esxi on on Lenovo Thinkserver TS440. If you have not read the part 1 of this series, I strongly suggest you read before following through. You can access the part 1 here. In this article we are going to perform following task.

  • Customize vmware home lab Esxi
  • Install and Configure VCenter
  • Install Vmware vSphere Client on Windows 7 machine.
  • Customize vmware home lab vSphere

Customize VMware home lab ESxi:

  1. Head over to your ESXi server and press F2

    VMware-esxi-free-vsphere-lab-13

 

  1. You will be Prompted with Authentication Required dialog. Enter Login Name as root and the password that you selected in part 1 of this series.

 

  1. There are many setting under this menu but for basic lab setup we will be configuring only IPv4 as static and DNS configuration. Select Configure management Network and Press {Enter}

    vmware home lab

  2. Select IPv4 Configuration and press {Enter}

    VMware-esxi

  3. Follow the instruction on screen and setup your static IP address , Subnet Mask and Default Gateway.

Note! Make sure to ping the desired IP before making it static. Your ping should Not resolve to “Destination host Unreachable”

  1. Press {Esc} to Return to Configure Management Network screen. Select DNS Configuration and Press {Enter}

  2. Enter Primary Server. I’m using using 192.168.1.2 because I plan on creating a VM machine that will host DNS, DHCP and AD (Active Directory). We will setup DNS, DHCP and AD server in future part of this series. I’m assuming you already know which value to populate on the following screen. If for any reason you don’t, simply google it and you will find many site that will explain DNS and hostname.

Apply/Save the settings and exit to main screen of your esxi server. We are done with vmware home lab ESXi server for now.