This is the part two of the series in  VMware Server installation. Please find the part one here.

In the last post we have installed the VMWare Server 2. Now it’s time to create a Datastore where the virtual disks will be created.  Virtual disks are like hard disks and by creating this you create kind of ‘hard disk’ which will exist as separate hard disk as far as VMware is concerned. With respect to the guest operating systems these are no more than a differnet kind of encrypted files.

Step 12: Select Create Virtual Machine from the commands section. In your original hard drive, select a location

Step 13: Select the OS you wish to install. This will optimize the virtual disk for the selected operating system. If you cannot find the operating system you want to install, select the one nearest to the one available.

Step 14: Next is the memory and processors. Choose equal to or more than the minimum recommended memory. Selecting number of processors works only for the host operating system. This means the applications running inside the Virtual machine cannot use the second processor. But if you choose the right number of processor, the guest operating system can use it for other resources and the virtual machine will get more share of the other processor and run much faster.

Step 15: In the Hard Disk section, I recommend you to create a Virtual Disk if you already don’t have one. Otherwise you should always boot the OS using a disk and also you will not be able to write commit anything using the guest OS. This means if you install new application in the fguest application, if you login and log out you will get only the default setup and all your applications and files will be erased during the next boot.

Step 16: In the next properties section of hard disk, you have two options.

1. Your hard disk (of course virtual) can be made growable. This means as you install more and more applications, it will increase in size, but initially with only the minimum needed size. But the speed at which your operating system(guest) works will be less here.
2. If you choose the second option of allocate full space initially, then though there is no data the allocated space will be demarcated for the virtual disk from your actual hard drive and you will not be able to use it. Here speed will be more.

Choose whatever fits depending on your choice.