To create Virtual Machine, you would need to do it via the VMWare vSphere Client. Simply double-click the VMWare vSphere Client that is installed on your workstation and logon using username “root” and its password. (The password would be sent to you personally in a separate email, in case you happened to be unable to retrieve the root password).

Upon logging on to the vSphere Client, simply create a virtual machine based on the following steps:

1. Right click on the server name and select the option “New Virtual Machine”.

2. Select the option “Custom” and click Next.

3. Give a name for the virtual machine and click Next.

4. At the Storage Option, you will get to see both the local server partition and the AMS 2100 (named VMWare Virtual Servers). Select the storage VMWare Virtual Servers and the virtual machine will be stored in the AMS Storage.

5. Coming to the virtual machine version selection, do ensure that the Virtual Machine Version 7 is selected and click Next to continue. The reason for not using Virtual Machine Version 4 is because the maximum number of virtual processors available for assignment is capped at 4. In case if additional physical processors is added to the server in the future, only Virtual Machine Version 7 can assign beyond 4 virtual processors.

6. Select the Guest Operating System and click Next.

7. Assign the number of virtual processor and click Next. (If the sever is a normal file server, we can leave the virtual processor as 1 (default). But if the server handles more resource- intensive roles like database server, you might want to assign 2 virtual processors.)

8. Enter the memory size and click Next. (If the OS installed is a 32-bit OS, you can assign up to 3 GB RAM. If the RAM size to be assigned is 4 GB or more, do consider 64-bit OS as 32-bit OS is unable to utilize beyond 3 GB RAM due to the OS constraints).

9. Leave the number of LAN connection to 1 and click Next.

10. Coming to SCSI controller selection, leave the option as default and click Next.

11. Select the option “Create a new virtual disk “ and click Next.

12. Indicate the capacity desired for the first hard disk (C Drive, default is 40 GB). Before click Next, do tick the option “Allocate and commit space on demand (Thin Provisioning).” This is to ensure that actual disk size grows as per utilization instead of upfront allocation.Should additional hard disk partitions (D Drive, E Drive, etc) are needed, do repeat the above step to create additional hard disks.

13. At the virtual device node, leave the option as default and click Next.

14. Click Finish to complete the creation of new Virtual Machine.

After creating the virtual machine, I believe you would also need the steps on installing OS on the created virtual machine. Below are the steps for your reference. In my example, I would be installing OS on the new virtual machine named “New Virtual Machine”.

1. Right-click on the virtual machine and select the option “Open Console”.

2. A console which looks something like below would launch:

3. Click on the play button to power on the virtual machine.

4. While the virtual machine is powered on, click on the CD icon and connect to your local CD Drive. For my case, my CD Drive is Z Drive. Insert the Windows Installation CD to your local CD Drive.

5.         Select VM -> Guest -> Send Ctrl+Alt+del to restart the virtual machine and the installation of OS should begin.