Setting up Server

aj9648

Hi

I have recently acquired a server (HP) from a friend of mine and wanted some advice on setting it up.

he installed something called esx on it which is some sort of virtual machine? but all I get when I turn the computer on is that I need to download tools to access the machine and my IP address.

Is it possible to access anything? It is not networked or anything like that and was hoping to use wireless connection

Any helpers.....to point me in the right path?

fwor

Servers often don't have a graphical user interface such as you get in Windows. You will need to play with it in console mode to configure it initially. Does any of this help:

http://www.vmware.com/support/esx2/doc/esx20admin_service-console2.html

If you want to save a lot of aggravation, I would start by using a wired network card to connect it to the rest of your network, as setting up anything Linux-based to use wireless can (depending on the distribution) be a right pain. A wired connection should just work, as it should get an IP address via DHCP from (probably) your router.

aj9648

When you say hard wire - do you mean connect a network cable between the server and my 'normal' PC/laptop? - sorry thick question alert !!!

RobertoMoir

It sounds like it has VMWare ESX on it. If you don't know what that is or what that means then you don't want to use it. You won't be able to do anything useful with it "locally" at the keyboard. It's a specialist piece of software for virtualisation of server installations on a network.

If you want to use it as a server, legally your options are to install Windows Server or a Linux distro. The first one is very expensive and the second option is free, so you may want to look at that one.