VMware vCloud Blog

Matthew D. Sarrel, Sarrel Group

In my first blog, I wrote a hands-on introduction to vCloud Express. In my second blog, I wrote about my experimentation with Terremark’s vCloud Express and found it easy to create a VM from one of Terremark’s templates.  Yet, as we know, simply creating VM’s isn’t the end of the story. While the templates for Operating Systems to install on my VM’s are great, what happens when I want to install a blank server and then install my own OS?

 Watch this video to see how to create a blank server:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVQ19GT8bs4

 It couldn’t be more straightforward.  In my next entry I’ll explain how to mount an ISO and install the OS and apps of your choice – this is probably the most challenging set of tasks I’ve encountered on vCloud Express. 

 By the way, Terremark tells me that in vCloud Enterprise you can just copy an OVF or VMDK up into your cloud environment.  This seems like it would be a lot easier, but then you can’t take advantage of the vCloud Express features that make it so easy and inexpensive to get started.

 Matthew D. Sarrel (or Matt Sarrel) is executive director of Sarrel Group, a technology product testing, editorial services, and technical marketing consulting company.  He also holds editorial positions at pcmag.com, eweek, GigaOM, and Allbusiness.com, and blogs at TopTechDog.