VMware vCloud Blog

Matthew D. Sarrel, Sarrel Group

In my previous post, I created a blank server within my Terremark vCloud Express VM environment.  Now I can connect to it and begin to install the operating system from a local .ISO file. 

 WARNING! A critical pre-requisite for a successful browser-based connection to a Windows machine is that the URL https://my.vcloudexpress.terremark.com must be in Internet Explorer’s trusted sites.  To add this URL to your trusted sites on IE, go to Internet options, security, trusted sites, and then click the sites button to add it.

Or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bitTioTYbws

Then I connect, mount the local ISO, and reboot the VM.  Windows XP begins to install.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRkoJnsNI4M

 It’s very time consuming to install from a local .ISO. 

Short cut alert! There is a faster way to do this. Upload all the .ISO's to a server in your vCloud Express environment, share that directory, and mount them from within the "local" network in the could. However, what I showed you in the video this is the easiest so those who want to get going fast and start experimenting with vCloud. 

There’s been a lot of buzz on the Terremark message boards about this not working at all over a low bandwidth connection so be forewarned.  I did this from a 1.5 Mbps SDSL connection and had no trouble.

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.