Let’s face it: installing VMware ESXi from a CD-ROM or from a USB key is painfully slow. Installing from the network is faster and more flexible. And preparing VMware to be installed from PXE turned out to be very easy.
The ISC DHCP configuration file could look like this:

# cat /etc/dhcpd.conf
default-lease-time 86400;
max-lease-time 604800;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address [...]

When it is not possible to install VMware ESXi 4.0 from a CD/DVD drive, and if the machine supports booting from USB, one can easily install from a USB drive. Preparing the USB drive to install ESXi 4.0 from it is very easy:
Create a FAT32 partition on the USB drive:

# install-mbr /dev/sdX
# fdisk /dev/sdX
…
# mkfs.vfat [...]

On this second post I want to talk about the interaction problems I experienced with the HP SmartArray P212 controller in this computer. The HP SmartArray P212 controller is certified for VMware ESXi 4.0 and Solaris 10. Initially I thought that using VMware would be useful to me in order to play with Solaris and [...]

libvirt and virt-manager are a blessing. They bring powerful, free, open source management to Xen- and KVM-based virtualization environments.
I’ve been using both for quite a while. Also, I’ve always prefered bridged networking support for my virtual machines over NAT. While NAT is non-disruptive and allows for isolation, I typically like to easily access services provided [...]

It seems that the oust of Diane Greene is having big consequences. One of them is that VMware ESXi is now a free product. I see this like a direct attack to Microsoft’s attempt to get into the virtualization market. What does this mean? That there is little reason to choose Microsoft’s hypervisor when you [...]

I have been fighting for quite some time to get Solaris 10 installed and working properly under VMwae Fusion 1.1 on an Intel Core 2 Duo Mac. I think this is an interaction problem between VMware Fusion and Solaris 10. Even if you tell VMware Fusion that you want to install Solaris in 32-bit mode, [...]

Now that KQEMU has switched to the GPL v2 license, I’m starting to get interested on it.
One problem with KQEMU is that modprobing the kernel module, kqemu.ko, doesn’t automatically create /dev/kqemu unless the proper udev rules are defined.
A cannonical udev rule file to get /dev/kqemu created automatically when kqemu.ko is loaded is:

# cat /etc/udev/rules.d/60-kqemu.rules
KERNEL==”kqemu”, NAME=”%k”, [...]

Xen is one of the coolest pieces of software I have ever used. It allows me to partition my box into manageable pieces, for increased security and increased resource utilization. I have been playing extensively with Xen for more than a year and have also written some posts about it.
NetBSD is a lean, mean, fast [...]

Since I first write my first attempt at trying to get VLAN support working under Xen, I’ve received some reports for people stating that it doesn’t work as expected. And they are right.
At the end of the first article, I pointed out I was having problems with UDP traffic. In turn, it was worse than [...]

Xen networking is powerful enough to allow for extreme customization. Although the default networking configuration is usually more than enough for simple scenarios, it can fall short when trying to support multiple guests standing on different VLANs.
In this short article, I describe the steps needed to configure Xen to attach itself to multiple VLANs using [...]