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Can I play a video game on an ESXI server with a graphics card?

I have a Dell tower server near my TV at home which functions as a media server, web server, etc. It runs VMware ESXI 6.0.

I'd like to be able to install a graphics card in the server, connect it to my TV, set up a Windows VM and play video games on it.

Note that I'm not trying to play games over a remote connection, like through vSphere Client, VNC or otherwise. I'd like to directly connect the graphics card to the TV and play that way.

Is this possible? If so, how can it be done?

How to monitor CPU heat inside VM inside ESX?

Say you have a machine hosting ESX, which you do not necessarily have KVM hooked upto. Not a corporate environment, a single box at home.

Is there a way to monitor the CPU heat on this effectively? Is there a way to place a VM and configure in such a way to be a monitoring station for the (actual physical hardware of ESX) heat?

(DOES NOT have to be inside VM - any method!?)

Thank you

edit suppose i rephrase to say, if i insert a windows/linux/etc vm in the esx, and get tools which will measure the cpu temp from the gui there, can i trust the measurement it gives me?

Where can I find the VMware vSphere client?

VMware's download site is very frustrating. I am unable to find where the download link to the vSphere client is.

Did they rename this tool? How can I get it?

VMware: what are the "vpxuser" and "dcui" user accounts for?

I am using VMware ESXi 5.1, and apart from the root account which I am using to manage my hypervisor, there are two more accounts:

vpxuser 
dcui

I don't know what these accounts are for, I don't know what the password is. Can I delete them? I am not using vcenter, or any of this stuff. I only need to be able to log in from vSphere client as root.

Is it safe to remove these accounts ?

Using VMware's ESXi, can I plug in 30 USB Wireless adapters and allow each of 30 VMs one?

I'm assuming ESXi will act very similarly to VMware Workstation or other products, so answers based on knowledge of those programs might also help.

I want to plug in 30 USB Wireless or Ethernet adapters into my server, and let each VM access one and only one of these devices.

Unfortunately, I don't have the hardware to just try it out as the purchase of hubs and adapters hinges on the result of this question.

The answer could be a resounding "yes, easy!" and that would be great. I couldn't find any answers to this question with google, and it's possible that this is because it's so easy to do.

Building a VMWare box for development use [closed]

I'm considering building a machine for the following purposes:

1) Run development environments.
2) Run DB servers to support the dev environments.

Currently I'd be running the following environments:
Windows 2k8 -- VS2010
Windows 2k3 -- Sql Server
Linux probably 2 separate builds.
Media server of some flavor.

The plan is to install VMWare ESXi on a SSD drive and have 3-5x HD's

Also, as time goes on I'll likely add additional machines... I can think of a couple right off hand... So likely 5 VM's running all the time with the potential of 2 or 3 more depending on what I'm working on...

I've noticed that VMWare workstation / Virtual box slows right now when running multiple virtual machines...

Currently I'm trying to decide between the 2 following specs: Server grade mobo with dual xeon's (quad core) and about 16gigs of ram. High end desktop PC i7 950ish with about 12 gigs of ram...

Does anyone know what sort of performance I'd get out of the i7, my gut feeling is that the dual CPU Xeon is more expensive up front but I'd get allot more life out of it... (Move to 8 core cpu's 2 or so years from now) allot more RAM potential...

I believe i can use ECC or non ECC ram on the server motherboards... I don't have the option of ECC with the i7 mobo...

Does anyone know if it's possible to plug I7's into Xeon Mobo's? Their both LGA1366 so I'm somewhat confused as to why their not listed as compatible...

Any input greatly appreciated.

Configuration for public (external) access to ubuntu guest on ESXI 5

I am setting up a demo system on a leased dedicated server. System consists of :

• ESXI host with 1 NIC assigned (so 1 Static IP)
• 64 bit Ubuntu guest as server

I installed and configured the system and the current network topology has :

• physical adapter
• A management network where I see the public IP assigned that is given to me by dedicated server provider
• Virtual Machine Port Group where my guest is running
• Finally a vSwitch between physical adapter and networks mentioned above

I can access to ESXI host, from the vSphere client I can access my Ubuntu guest as well. Guest has access to web (verified by pinging).

My question : What kind of basic setup would allow external users to access services running on the Ubuntu guest ?

Before asking this question I browsed a bit and scanned through VMWare documentations. I have seen:

port forwarding via router however I do not have control over the router.

using pfSense well this one is looking like a solution but a bit more complicated then I expected.

Are there any simpler ways to accomplish my goal ?

Note : I am a software developer with a bit familiarity of computer networks, virtualization and linux. Therefore I would really appreciate simple solutions (if possible), explanations/directions on the topic.

How do I recover or reset VMware ESXi Server root password?

I've inherited a VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 but haven't found any documentation, especially not the root password, nor have I gotten hold of the former admin.

The suggestions I've found online presuppose that I first get a GRUB boot menu, which I don't.

So, lacking a GRUB menu, how do I recover or reset the root password, short of a reinstall?

If it is of any significance, the server is a Dell PowerEdge 2850.

Choosing a hypervisor for home use

i have a NAS running physically on an old PC. I want to virtualize this nas on the same hardware to be able to host another small Linux server. I have done this before but there are two issues i want to "fix" this time around. So the main requirements for the hypervisor are as follows:

Need to have

1) SATA pass through on such a level so that the NAS can spin down harddrives without the hypervisor intervening. Yes, i know, servers shouldn't spin down but this is a home machine and i'm at work half of the day and electricity is expensive!

2) Presenting two physical drives to the FreeBSD guest VM just as they were before the migration so that it can continue running. The actual VM will be reinstalled of course, but it needs to be able to pick up old data through some kind of SATA pass through. Last time around i used ESXi and vmfs drives, now i want to keep the drives at the FreeBSN native format (SoftRAID).

Nice to have

1) GUI admin from Mac OS, native or web doesn't really matter.

My hardware

ASRock ALiveNF6G-VSTA mainboard http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=ALiveNF6G-VSTA

AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+

5GB of DDR2 RAM

1x500GB system drive

2x1TB data drives

ESXI only 4.7GB RAM available for VMs from 8GB of RAM. why so little?

I have an ESXI 6.0 with 8GB Ram. For some reason I can only use 4.7GB for VMs. I tried using esxtop but didnt see anything using lots of RAM. Below are screenshots from vsphere. Can anyone help me to understand where is Memory going? As you can see below there is total 8104 MB RAM available to ESXI but somehow I only have 4.7GB ram to use for VMs. When I turn off all VMs, esxi is using 1.4GB which is OK, but I still have only 4.7GB to use for VMs. Where is rest of RAM going and how can I get more RAM to be used by VMs?

How do I get audio from a ESXI 5.0/5.1 Windows 7 VM?

I want to run a LARGE Windows 7/XP VM. Like 50+ Gigabytes of ram and 4 cores. I need to be able to console in to this VM, but for alert purposes I need the VM to pass audio either back out to me via the console connection OR by USB speakers or something. I am on a Lenovo RD530 rack server running a XEON E5 6 core processor. All the info I find on how to do this seems out of date at best, and doesn't work on most. Any help would be appreciated.

VMware ballooning state from inside guest

There's tools (e.g. extop) to check VMware ballooning state from VMware host.

I'm using VMware to run CentOS 6.3 and when ballooning stars consume memory to reclaim it back to ESX host, my system behaves not nicely under the stress.

Is there way to see the ballooning state from inside guest system?

Differences between encrypting an actual PC vs a virtual one?

Are there any differences between using for example TrueCrypt to encrypt the system drive of an actual PC and a virtual one running on ESXi?

Are there any security advantages/differences?

Resource allocation with vSphere Hypervisor

I am building an home server on a old PC (Core 2 Duo E6600 as processor, 4GB RAM, two hard disk, one for each VM), and I am having difficulties with one of my VM. I currently have two VMs on it, one running Untangle OS, and the other running Windows Server 2008 R2. The Untangle VM runs perfectly, but the Server 2008 is very slow, with barely anything installed except the OS (I think I only installed an antivirus, which only scans on demand).

Even though the PC is old, I am pretty sure it should run Server 2008 pretty well, although you may correct me if I am wrong. I have read about the processor and found that it actually had 2 physical processor and 2 logical in each physical (not sure what exactly is the difference). This said, I thought it actually had four processors to allocate to my VMs. I then assigned 1 processor and 1 GB RAM to the Untangle VM, and three processors and 3GB RAM to the Server 2008. The Windows Server was practically unusable. Then I learned from a co-worker that process could actually freeze when assigned to two different physical processor as data would have trouble crossing the path through each physical socket (not sure if it's right). He suggested that I put only 2 processors on that VM, so that the all the data would be processed on the same physical processor. This seemed to fix the issue for bit, but I am still experiencing some time fragment where the VM runs very slow. It comes by waves. I may run a virus scan and it goes very fast for the first 30 mins, but then slow down by a lot, and when it finishes, I barely can even open windows explorer.

I also reserved 4800 MHz for the VM with Server 2008 (not sure if it actually means two full processor, as they run at 2.4GHz each), but I am not too familiar with this notion of resource reservation.

I am wondering if the VM resources are distributed correctly (which I think they are not, but that's only a feeling), or if it's just that it's an old PC and will have trouble running Windows Server 2008.

Please forgive me if I am using wrong terms or mixing notions, as I am new to this world of virtualization.

Thanks for the help,

Louis

How do I restrict a ESX client user to only their resource pool?

I have 5 servers running ESXi, they are managed by vCenter. I want to setup resource pools for various IT admins from each department, and limit them to create and manage VM’s in their own resource pool, and not be able to see other resource pools/VMs/etc. I am running ESXi 5.0.

I was able to create the resource pools under each ESXi host. For each pool I set reservations and maximum allowances for resource utilization.

I then set permissions for users on each resource pool.

As it stands, each user can log in and only see their own resource pool and virtual machines. However they can also create virtual machines directly under the host, when I try to apply the “no-access” permission to the host, they can’t create VMs in their resource pool. Even when I click to not propagate the rule. I can't restrict them from the ESXi host directly or else they can't use their resource pool.

Further, the reservations/maximum limits I set for each resource pool don’t seem to matter when I login as a user and go to create a VM, it let's me create something well out of the tolerances supposedly set in the resource pool. For example, I can set reserved RAM to 8 GB, then the set the max expandable RAM to 12 GB, but then the user can still create a VM with 16 GB RAM.

Anyone know the best way to go about restricting users to their resource pools and not allowing them to allocate resources for a VM they should not be allowed?