Vmware ESXi server

[remyseroos]

hi,

 

ATM i'm setting up a server for a local company. I have a good amount of experience with Linux so normally I just hook the server up with Suse, Ubuntu, RHEL etc.

But...

 

The IT guy before me just bought some hardware (like a beast Xeon, 4x WD red...) and discovered that his knowledge isn't good enough to just set up everything, so now I can start cleaning some mess up, and I hope some can assist a bit.

 

To kick off:

- I have 1 physical server on which i need to do several things (storage, AD, Mobile management, program deployment, print server etc..)

- Like i said before, mostly just do all this things on Linux but there is a policy that requires the use of an Microsoft AD server....(stupid policy)

- So I can just run Ubuntu, make a VM windows server and done. but that won't work well with my management software and all that kind of stuff. 

- I also can't use a second server, because that ***** it guy didn't think twice before doing something

 

And then I came across ESXi. so i did some research and this i what i found out (please correct me if i'm wrong):

- VMXi is just a hypervisor running directly on the pc HW, so essentially it's an OS for virtualisation.

- ESX is the "more features" version.

- for interaction with the OS's i need vSphere or vCenter (vCenter is the "more" version)

- basically you use it to just run 2 or more OS's side-by-side at the same time (like a VM, but you're host OS is ESXi/ESX)

 

With all that said, what should I do?:

 

- Install VMXi or ESX

- vSphere or vCenter (in windows server)

- Are there any special HW requirements to run ESXi/ESX

- and how is OS support 

- I have some vmware knowledge, but do I need some special knowledge to config & manage ESX/VMXi

 

It turned out to be a bit long post, so i hope some will have the patience to read it

[remyseroos]

Nobody ??