Thor
Thor is the server that hosts our virtual machines for the IT trainees to use for training. There are 26 total virtual machines, with 6 of them only existing to serve as a base for the other 20. It has 4 gigabit connections that are nic-teamed.
System Information
-Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz
-Memory: 71.99 GB
-Operating system: VMWare EXSi 6.7.0 Update 3 (Build 17167734)
How to connect to Thor
To connect to the ESXi server, go to 10.21.25.9 in a web browser to get to the login. Login using the same credentials you use for the domain.
After logging in, you will be brought to the host page. This gives all sorts of info about Thor, such as specs like RAM and CPU, and overall load. You can also restart or shutdown the server by clicking the buttons at the top.
Connecting to virtual machines
To connect to the virtual machines, click the "Virtual Machines" tab on the left. This will bring up the list of all the virtual machines. You can select some, or all, and power them on or shut them down from here. Or you can click on the name of the virtual machine to bring up more information about it, connect, and do more detailed things. Once in a virtual machine's page, you can power it on or shut it down, view ram and processor usage, network info, storage, connect to the VM, and edit it's settings. We really should only need to power on/off, connect, and occasionally restore the virtual machine from snapshots if something goes wrong. To connect, a virtual machine must be powered on. Once it is powered on, click on the "Console" button at the top left. This will give you some options to connect. You can open it as a window in the ESXi console with "open browser console", or you can open it in a new browser tab or window with the new tab or new window links. You can also use VMRC, which is a proprietary connection made by VMWare, this has not been tested on our servers at the time of writing.
To restore a virtual machine from a snapshot, you must be in the virtual machine's page (by clicking it's name in the list of virtual machines), then click actions. Then click snapshots from the dropdown, and then restore snapshot. It will ask you if you want to restore from the latest one, and click restore if the newest one works (We currently only have one snapshot saved for all of them, which is confirmed good). To manually pick a snapshot to restore from, choose manage snapshots instead of restore snapshots, and it will take you to the list of snapshots. At the time of writing the "Original" snapshot is the only one that exists, which is the first snapshot that we made after creating. This is the one to go to if all else fails, and will probably be the only snapshot. When you know which one you want to choose from the list, click the name, then click restore snapshot from the top of the popup window. Then confirm by clicking restore.
Mounting a USB or portable HDD
In order to add software to a VM it is necessary to have the ability to transfer files from a USB or a portable HD. The following will guide you through that process. Download the software you need to a portable HD or a USB drive and attach the drive to Thor. Then power on the VM you wish to install the software to. Then right click on the VM and edit settings. Click the add other device link and choose USB device. You should then see the device that you attached to the computer in the drop down list, choose it and click save. Then log into the VM and open file explorer. You should now see the device you attached, just open it to access your file and install the software as you normally would. Here is a link that explains the process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdvPNhG1GYg
Cloning an Image
- Right click on the image to be cloned
- Click export with images
- Choose only the vmdk file
- Export
- Click "Create/Register VM"
- Click "Deploy a virtual machine from an OVF or OVA file"
- Name it "<name of original image> (<iteration>)"
- Example: Networking Image (1)
- Upload the exported OVF template and VMDK file
- Hit next and select literally any disk except for "Images for cloning"
- hit next twice
- Finish