Installation guide

CHAPTER 3 Using the VMware Management Interface to Manage Your Virtual Machines
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To reconfigure the virtual machine so it starts with the first serial port disconnected,
either change the value for the serial0.startConnected option to false.
Note: Only one operating system can be connected to the serial port at one time.
You cannot configure more than one virtual machine to use a particular serial port at
a given time. To use additional serial ports, use a higher number in the lines you add
to the configuration file.
Changing the number after serial affects the serial port that is available inside the
virtual machine. Changing the number after /dev/ttyS affects the port that is used
on your physical computer. For example, to connect the virtual machine's second
serial port (COM2) to the physical computer's second serial port, add the following
lines to the configuration file as described in Modifying the Configuration File Directly
(Advanced Users Only) on page 141.
• Add an option called serial1.present and set its value to true.
• Add an option called serial1.fileType and set its value to device.
• Add an option called serial1.fileName and set its value to /dev/ttyS1.
Using Disk Modes
ESX Server can use disks in four different modes: persistent, nonpersistent, undoable
and append.
• Persistent: Persistent disks behave exactly like conventional disk drives on a
computer. All writes to a persistent disk are written out permanently to the disk
as soon as the guest operating system writes the data.
• Nonpersistent: All changes to a nonpersistent mode disk are discarded after the
virtual machine is powered off.
• Undoable: When you use undoable mode, you have the option later of keeping
or discarding changes you have made during a working session. Until you
decide, the changes are saved in a redo-log file. When you power off the virtual
machine, you are prompted to commit the changes, keep the log by continuing
to save changes to the redo log or discard the changes.
• Append: VMware ESX Server supports an additional append mode for virtual
disks stored as VMFS files. Like undoable mode, append mode maintains a redo
log. However, in this mode, no dialog appears when the virtual machine is
powered off to ask whether you want to commit changes. All changes are
continually appended to the redo log. At any point, the changes can be undone
by removing the redo log. You should shut down the guest operating system
and power off the virtual machine before deleting that virtual machine’s redo