9 replies to this topic

[KV2]

Hi all, im compleaty new here, but have come across this site lots in the past few days (with good reason**)

So down to the nity grity quest, i will be buying a new pc in a few weeks and i want to do someting that may or may not be unatainable.
using vmware's software i hope to (using a script?(auto run...lol) boot to esxi witch will then automaticaly take a vm (vmdk) and copy or place it on a ramdrive and boot that vm. then on shuting down that vm, place it back on the harddrive.
i beleve this should be posable i just have no idea how to go about setting this up. if anyone has an idea or if this has be descused before please let me know.
also could someone point me in the right direction for a tutorial on wrighting scripts.

(**good reason being that nowhere else realy try's to push the bar on getting a computer to do just what you want it to do.)

thanks all

[KV2]

please pardon my stupidy, but realy i do wish to "learn"/play

[joakim]

Are you planning on running esxi vm's inside workstation in PE-mode?

If so, there are specific hardware requirements. Look here for a good description of the setup;
http://communities.v...m/docs/DOC-9000

For a more indepth explanation post your question at http://communities.v...top/workstation or http://sanbarrow.com/phpBB2/
Did not quite understand the part of copying to ramdisk the vm though..

Joakim

[KV2]

first off thanks VM(very Much )
my understanding of esxi (tho probaly wrong) is it was a sort of base os from witch you load/run your VM's, VMDK?
if my first asumchion is wrong please feel free to ignore all the rest of this post.
for arguments sake lets say the vmdk file is on the only harddrive in the computer, lets call it c:\VMs\PC1.VMDK (i know a linux based sys is diffrent) when esxi boots i would like it to start a ram disk(lets call it D:\) then copy the PC1.VMDK file from c:\VMs\PC1.vmdk to D:\ (ramdisk)and then run the VM D:\PC1.vmdk
then when i shut down pc1 the file d:\pc1.vmdk would over wright c:\VMs\PC1.vmdk
this is only how i think it might work tho i could just be insane.

In short i am looking for a way to dump the entire os on to ram and run from there, wile being able to install some apps or drivers with out loosing the changes on power off.

i maybe going realy far out of my way and i cerntly feel a little out of my depth...

any ideas are very welcome.
as for the pc Core i7 920/ga-ex58-ud5/12gb ddr3/2 30gb vertex ssd/sata control card/gtx285/psu/dvdrw/case/etc

[joakim]

It looks like that hardware has vt support, so esxi should be possible.

my understanding of esxi (tho probaly wrong) is it was a sort of base os from witch you load/run your VM's, VMDK?

Yes it is an OS, but an enterprise solution for hosting large amounts of virtual machines.

In short i am looking for a way to dump the entire os on to ram and run from there, wile being able to install some apps or drivers with out loosing the changes on power off.

There is no need to do so, because the all applications and drivers are still there in the vmdk after a reboot. If the performance is your concern, you may consider physical disks instead of virtual disks (but reported to not make any significant difference). You should consider VMware Workstation or Player for what you describe, and not esxi. It may still be possible to load it to a ramdisk as you said, but that would just eat up your system resources...without any gains.

i maybe going realy far out of my way and i cerntly feel a little out of my depth...

Yes it could be done a little bit easier.

You did not say if it was for PE-mode (preinstallation environment) or not?

Joakim

[KV2]

so i have used vmplayer so 2 people can use my laptop at the same time. With my new hardware coming soon i wanted a way to really make it shine
sad as that sounds I'd love my new computer to feel new all the time...

i was probably thinking of the preinstall but to be honest i don't know enough to say for sure.
no wait i bet you it was workstation...

as i say i don't know, but there really is nothing like jumping both feet in and finding out.

[joakim]

I still don't know exactly what you're trying to achieve. 2 people on your laptop at the same time?

Still only possible through a remote connection to a vm, either hosted by esxi or with rdp to a vm running inside player/workstation/server.

Having your laptop set up with esxi is possible, but it means you cannot use your laptop yourself for anything other than hosting vm's (The esxi OS is a stripped-down linux-similar derivative). But can also be achieved if installed inside a vm in workstation/player, but will suffer from bad performance, and may only be feasible for demonstration purposes.

That said, vmware workstation has a trial that also includes the free player, and with that hardware you could easily run multiple vm's at the same time.

Joakim

[KV2]

thanks for your replay i understand now.
i have never had a succinct explanation, yes workstation is the one ill look into.
sorry my brain works funny but ill get there. in the end.

i should say what has brought me hear clearly, with 12gb of ram i thought it would be nice to have my os run o the ram, i remember first doing this with knoppix live cd, and was awesome, everything was there before you even thought of asking for it, where it failed big time tho was the fact that it would not save changes made to it from one day to the next. you could install it to your hard drive but i could never get a way of making boot to ramdisk without the cd. so after a week or so of research (Google) i thought of using a vm and placing it on a ramdisk to run it,
wrong way to go about really but you live and you learn.

cheers for all the help & sorry for the confusing.

[joakim]

sorry my brain works funny but ill get there. in the end.

It certainly is a little bit funny when working with virtualization.

i should say what has brought me hear clearly, with 12gb of ram i thought it would be nice to have my os run o the ram, i remember first doing this with knoppix live cd, and was awesome, everything was there before you even thought of asking for it, where it failed big time tho was the fact that it would not save changes made to it from one day to the next. you could install it to your hard drive but i could never get a way of making boot to ramdisk without the cd. so after a week or so of research (Google) i thought of using a vm and placing it on a ramdisk to run it,

Instead of installing the linux OS to your harddisk, you install it inside a virtual machine to a virtual harddisk (.vmdk). Loading it the way you describe, with an iso to ramdisk, can still be achieved with changes saved. The procedure to do so differ from different distros, so you better check them out. I would recommend installing the os to the virtual machine though. It will be allocated its own resources and will be preatty fast on such a machine.

Just jump into it!

Joakim

[sanbarrow]

I am still a bit confused about this post ;-)

Anyway - if you want to run VMware on a 12 Gb host - PE-based solutions don't make it. There is no PE that I know about that can handle 12 Gb RAM AND run a partly 32 bit app.
So you either can install a 64 bit Windows-system such as XP-64 or Win7-64 or use a 64bit Linux.
This can be a LiveCD if you want ...

Ulli