Home Lab – Phase 1 – More annoyances

I got a free LCD tv recently, 32 inches. I was hoping to use it as the monitor for the VMWare box for a bit. Until I could save the money to replace it with something nicer / actual monitors (dual display ports).

Problem is, ESXi is designed to be a type 1 hypervisor. I never knew that’s what bare-metal systems were called. I’ve worked with Citrix Xen in the past. It was nice, but I hated to do the work over the network.

Type 2 hypervisors are designed to be ran on other operating systems. Will let me run in a head mode. I kind of just want to see alien vault full screen on 32 inches. 😉

Going with ESXi, I had to compile my own version of the boot cd, since my Intel 217LM NIC wasn’t reconized. I used the net-e1000e driver from V-front. Even though the wiki for that driver says it doesn’t work with ESXi-customizer, it seem to be working for me.

Next I had to figure out how to get in the the bios of the TS140 (f1). There are no hints on the splash screen. The box ships without VT-x turned on.

I’m still not sure about doing this whole configure and access over the network thing. I mean I already have keyboard, mouse, and “monitor” for this box. ;|

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