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jk303
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Jan 30, 2012

BIGIP 11.1.0 ISO on VMworkstation 8?

Hi,

Anyone had any luck running .iso on vmware workstation 8 yet? I was hoping that I could possibly get away from building ESXi installtion and install .iso on workstation. Possible? Procedure? Thanks!

 

3 Replies

  • BIGIP 11.x is not supported on VMware Workstation. It requires ESX 4.x or ESXi 4.x/5.x, with 4 GB of memory, and 2 CPU at a minimum.

     

  • Workstation is not supported, but many people got VE to work on workstation 7. Have you tried installing the ISO on a new VM on workstation 8? You will probably need to edit the vmx file to change the adapter type to vmxnet3:

     

     

    ethernet1.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"

     

     

    Do this for all but ethernet0.virtualDev (which is used for the LTM mgmt interface).

     

     

    Aaron
  • Not much to it really:

     

    1. Create a new VM using the Redhat Linux template (64bit if your host supports it)
    2. At least 2gb of ram (more is better and at least 4gb is required for 11.4 I believe)
    3. 11.3 and above support more CPUs
    4. At least 80gb drive (more is better but can be thin provisioned)
    5. IDE hard drive - very important. SCSI will fail
    6. I usually also remove floppy, USB, and sound
    7. Build at least 3 network interfaces (1 mgmt, 1 internal VLAN, and 1 external VLAN). I personally like to build at least 4: 1 mgmt, 1 internal host only, 1 external host only, and 1 natted interface (so it can talk out to the world through Workstation's NAT).
    8. Once finished, either completely shut down VM Workstation or close the window on the new VM. Open the .vmx file in a text editor and add the ethernet1.virtualDev = "vmxnet3" stuff that Hoolio mentioned for each interface other than ethernet0.
    9. Start the new VM and let the install happen.
    10. Once the install is done and it has rebooted, type 'config' in the console to set the management IP. You should them be golden. After you license it, go to Network - Interfaces, and make sure all of the interfaces have MAC addresses. If they don't, there's a good chance you didn't edit the .vmx correctly or something went wrong in the install.
    11. When configuring the VLANs, the interfaces should be in the order they're listed in the Workstation config (ie. 1.1 is the second interface, 1.2 is the third, etc.), but that may not always be the case, so some trial and error may be required.