Not having a full GUI to use, it can sometimes be difficult to install software on Windows 2008 Server Core machines. You need to get used to scripted installations, software distribution methods and / or silent installs. If you've gone as far as initiating the tools installation for a VM you could be forgiven for wondering what the heck you're going to do next. The install doesn’t autorun (Windows Explorer does this normally but Windows Explorer isn’t there). Even if you run setup64.exe manually it won’t help. If you run setup64.exe /? though you get a little…
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Before I get started, I just want to say that I don't know for sure if this is an issue that is causing problems for some VMs that I have been looking at or not. I'd welcome any feedback, comment or help anyone has to offer on the topic. I thought that I'd share this just in case it helps anyone at any point. The environment that I've been working in is a shared web hosting platform built on ESX 3.5 and vCenter 2.5. Recently the focus of effort has been on data centre migrations, service migrations and…
Have you ever wondered how to install VMtools on a Windows 2008 Server R2 Core guest running on an ESX 3.5 host? “Hang on,” you say, “R2 is officially supported on ESX 3.5!” And you'd be right, for the moment at least. ESX 3.5 U4 does indeed not support R2 officially yet although VMware support hinted that U5 is due at some point. Still, the customer is king and mine wanted an R2 VM. First things first, the WoW64 Execution Layer needs to be installed and the server rebooted to allow R2 to…