Installation guide

CHAPTER 1 Introduction to VMware ESX Server
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Using VMware ESX Server
VMware ESX Server contains many features to help you manage your virtual
machines’ resources. In this section, we attempt to highlight some of these features,
by listing tasks that you should perform on your ESX Server system.
The information contained in this table presumes that you have successfully installed
and configured ESX Server on your hardware. To get help, refer to the VMware ESX
Server Installation Guide.
Familiarizing Yourself with ESX Server
The following table includes tasks from the VMware Management Interface for an
Administrator (root user), who manages and maintains ESX Server.
Task Description
Log into the VMware
Management Interface and
familiarize yourself with its
features.
As the root user, you have additional privileges that other users don’t
have. In addition to the Status Monitor page, you have access to the
Options page, that allows you to configure ESX Server, including
networking, security, SNMP, users and groups, storage configuration,
and so on.
See Modifying VMware ESX Server on page 216.
Create users and groups. Create users and place them into groups for different access to ESX
Server. For best practice, we suggest that the root user doesn’t own
virtual machines. In general, users who create, access, and modify
virtual machines don’t need to have the additional administrative
privileges of the root user.
You might choose to have a virtual machine owned by a “flagship
user” instead of a real person. By using a “flagship user,” only one user
account owns the virtual machines that are in production. An
advantage of using flagship accounts is that flagship users never
leave the company or go on vacation.
See Creating a Flagship User on page 167 and Changing Users and
Groups on page 224
for more information.
Add additional disks and
partitions, as needed.
When creating your VMFS volumes, you should keep the default
access type public, unless you plan to use your virtual machines for
clustering. If you are running clustering software, select “shared” as
your VMFS volume access type. See
Configuring Storage: Disk Partitions
and File Systems on page 233
and Configuration for Clustering on
page 329
for more information.