Networking: A Beginner’s Guide Fifth Edition- P80 pot

N File options If you select the checkbox Allocate All Disk Space Now, VMware will create a virtual hard disk file that is the size you selected.. The trade-off is that if you choose to

N File options If you select the checkbox Allocate All Disk Space Now,

VMware will create a virtual hard disk file that is the size you selected

Otherwise, VMware will automatically expand the virtual hard disk file’s

size as the space is used The trade-off is that if you choose to allocate the

space immediately, the virtual hard disk may consume much more space

on the host system’s hard disk than it is actually using On the other hand,

if the space is allocated immediately, then the performance of creating

files or writing new blocks to the disk will be much faster, because the

space is already allocated I recommend leaving this checkbox unchecked,

but choosing a size that is comfortably larger than you think you need

This way, you efficiently use actual hard disk space, and the automatic

expansion process is generally not a huge price to pay for most uses

N Independent disk mode This option allows you to configure a virtual

hard disk as independent of any snapshots you make of the virtual

machine Note that you can have multiple virtual hard disks in each

virtual machine, and for some applications, you may want the one or more

of the virtual hard disks to not be part of the VMware snapshot process

Generally, you will leave this option unselected

Figure 23-8. Setting virtual hard disk properties

N Virtual device node This setting lets you choose whether VMware will emulate a SCSI or IDE controller for the virtual hard disk you are creating, and which virtualized controller interface number will be used Realize that the type of hard disk interface used on the host computer does not matter here; VMware can run a virtual SCSI hard disk on a host computer that has only IDE drives or vice versa For this setting, VMware will propose a virtual disk interface type based on the guest operating system you chose, and you should generally accept the default choice

N Write caching You can set the virtual hard disk to optimize write caching to optimize for data safety or for performance In a production environment, where the data stored on the virtual machine is important, you should choose Safety If you’re just experimenting with an operating system and wouldn’t mind if you lost the files stored on it, you can choose Performance

8 On the Network Adapter page, shown in Figure 23-9, you can choose to create

a virtual network adapter for the virtual machine In most cases, you will need

to do this Click Create a Network Adapter

Figure 23-9. Choosing whether or not to add a network adapter

9 On the Properties page for the network adapter, shown in Figure 23-10, you

can choose to create three types of network adapters Select from the following

choices, and then click Next

N Bridged This is the default choice and is best for most applications

A bridged virtual network adapter makes use of the host computer’s

network adapter, but it obtains its own IP address from the appropriate

DHCP server, or it can have an IP address manually assigned to it The

main thing to keep in mind is that if you run many virtual machines

simultaneously, each one with a bridged virtual network adapter will use

one of the available IP addresses on your network

N Network Address Translation (NAT) When you choose a NAT virtual

network adapter, the virtual machine makes use of the IP and MAC

addresses of the host computer when it communicates on the network If

you are running various servers as virtual machines, a NAT configuration

can be difficult to set up, as you would need to configure port forwarding

so that the packets are properly routed to the appropriate virtual machine

Figure 23-10. Setting network adapter properties

For instance, if you have a web server running in a virtual machine that is using a NAT virtual network interface, you would need to configure the host operating system to forward incoming port 80 (and maybe port 443) packets to that virtual machine If the virtual machine is running only client-type systems, however, then NAT would help conserve IP addresses

on the local network

N HostOnly Choosing HostOnly creates a virtual network on the host computer Virtual machines that use this type of virtual network adapter can communicate over the network, but only to other running virtual machines on the host computer or to the host computer itself

10 On the CD/DVD Drive page, shown in Figure 23-11, choose how to access the CD/DVD drive VMware Server can either share access to the host computer’s CD/DVD drive or it can emulate a CD or DVD drive by connecting to an image file (ISO) stored on the host computer, within the VMware datastore If the guest operating system download already exists on the host computer as an image file, then choosing this option is very convenient, and means you don’t need

Figure 23-11. Setting CD/DVD drive access

to burn the image file to a piece of optical media If you are installing a guest

operating system that you have on a CD or DVD, then you should create a new

virtual CD or DVD drive by choosing Use a Physical Disk For this example,

since you’re probably installing Ubuntu Linux from a downloaded image file,

you should choose Use an ISO Image Once Ubuntu is fully installed, you can

change this to give the virtual machine access to the host computer’s CD or

DVD drives, if you wish

11 When you choose Use an ISO Image, you see the Properties page for the

CD/DVD drive, as shown in Figure 23-12 Click Browse, and select the ISO file

that you placed in the VMware datastore Make sure that the Connect at Power

On option is selected, so that the new virtual machine will be able to boot from

the image file, which it will need to do to install the guest operating system

Click Next to continue

Figure 23-12. Setting the CD/DVD drive properties