Fun with VMWare install

So being the loser I am, I decided to buy a server for my home network. I got a Rackable server online for about 200 bucks. The server came with two dual Xeon processors, 4X 36 GB SCSI drives, 4 GB of ECC Ram and two NICs. (Four are on the front, maybe for diagnostics???) My plan for this little diddy was to turn it into a VMware server. VMWare gives you the ability to turn one computer into several computers. This can be used to save space, computers and money. This would give me the most functionality for my bottom dollar. My plan was to use it as a test environment to test out new software and operating systems. Being free, I downloaded the ESXi version of VMWare. This software runs directly on the metal, meaning it’s basically an OS and installs directly on your machine with no other OS required like WINNE or even VMServer (which is also free). I believe VMWare uses a moded version of a Linux distro for it’s ESX series. So I go on the site, download the .ISO file and burn it to a CD. I used CD Burner XP freeware, thinking nothing of it. I get home and hooked up a DVD-ROM to the drive, which is a pain in the ass. The server is obviously rackable so all the components are kind of jammed on top of each other. So anyway, the IDE controller is under one of the drives, so I was like no big deal, I’ll pull out the drive and plug in my IDE. “No big deal” IS THE STORY OF MY LIFE. I try to take it out and the screws are stripped, so after about 20 minutes of finagling with different screw drivers I get it out. Hook it up and boot up the computer. Wow, super loud. This thing has like 5 fans. I go into the SCSI configuration screen to configure this bad boy for RAID 5. To my disappointment this wasn’t an option on my Intel SE7500WV2 . Oh well. I restart it again which take about a good 5 minutes and go into BIOS. I get into BIOS and get the bright idea to flash the BIOS. Why not I figure? No OS installed and the worst that happens I crash it, send it back, tell them it doesn’t work and get a new server. I go in and tell it to boot to floppy, pull out a floppy drive and try to hook it up. To my surprise, no floppy interface. So no big deal, I could get a USB floppy and flash, but that would be too much effort so a go back into BIOS. I tell it to boot to the DVD drive so I can install ESXi and get to my multiple machine goodness. I try to boot and I get this goofy ass message: Error 001: Drive not found. What the hell I think? I go back into BIOS and reset it to factory defaults. Same message. Well, to make a long story short, I figured out that I enabled the floppy and the system was looking for the drive and couldn’t find it so I turned off the floppy drive. By the way. Nothing on the Intel site or the internet found anything on this error message. Well I turn it off and boot to the ROM drive. It boots to the ROM drive and I get a cursor blinking at me. Well what the hell? I used a brand new CD for the image. Is this thing broken? Did some renob get the same idea as me? So I try everything; check the jumper settings on the drive, hook up several different drives and change the boot settings in BIOS. Finally I get the idea, maybe I should try the CD in another computer. I put the CD in another computer and it doesn’t work either. So I re-downloaded the ESXi image and burned it to a CD with Nero. Booted the CD and it came right up. (Yeah, I’ve wasted like 2 hours on this) I install for the ESXi server (super simple) and only took about 20 minutes. ESXi is available online for free from VMWare (without support). You can get it here.