Deploying LogonBox VM in VMware ESXi 5.x

system

This article walks you through the installation of the LogonBox Virtual Machine on VMware's ESXi Hypervisor versions 5.x, using the vSphere client. 

 

Step 1. Pre-requisites

You need to download the virtual machine image for your Hypervisor.

Open your browser and navigate to the Download page.

Enter your details and click Get LogonBox VM.

Select ESXi OVF from the dropdown menu and click on the Download button.

 

Step 2. Installing the VM

To install the image onto an ESXi VM host, first, extract the zip file just downloaded. This will contain 3 files (.mf, .ovf and .vmdk).

Now launch the vSphere client.

Select the File menu and then click on Deploy OVF Template…

 

 

Click the Browse button and navigate to the location where the OVF was extracted to. Select the ovf file and click Open.

Click Next to continue.

 

Click Next on the Template Details page, then choose a memorable name for this machine and click Next again.

 

Continue through the rest of the deploy wizard, selecting a resource pool and choosing the destination storage, disk format and network mapping as appropriate for your environment.

Click Finish to start the image deployment.

 

Click Close when the deployment completes.

 

The LogonBox VM can now be powered on.

 

Step 3. VMCentre Configuration

Open up the VM console in vSphere after the machine has booted. You will be presented with a screen prompting you to set a password. Enter a new password, confirm it and click Set.

 

Now re-enter this password to log on to VMCentre.

 

VMCentre is a frontend that we have created to help easily manage the virtual machine.

To learn about all of the features of VMCentre please refer to our separate guide.

For now, all we need to do is to configure the networking.

Click the Network Configuration button on the left-hand side.

 

The network configuration defaults to DHCP, so if this is enough for your configuration then no further configuration is needed.

For setting a static address though, type in the values of the DNS server and DNS search domain, then type in the hostname that will be used for the VM.

Untick the DHCP checkbox and enter values for the IP, Gateway, Broadcast and Subnet addresses.

 

Once the configuration has been completed, scroll down the page and click Save. Click Apply on the confirmation window that appears.

 

Reboot the system to ensure the new IP settings are good, the current IP address should be displayed on the Logon page as well as the main VMCentre screen.

You may now continue the configuration in a web browser by connecting to https://<hostname>

When connecting to the web interface for the first time, you will be asked to run through the setup wizard to finalize the installation.