I've been rebuilding my home VMware lab environment recently.  I decided to jump right into vSphere 5.1 with the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance instead of the traditional Windows SQL combo.  Deploying a vApp is much faster and cheaper from a licensing perspective than a full-blown Windows and SQL setup.  After I imported the vCenter Virtual Appliance .OVA,  I logged into the administrative web interface of the appliance (https://vcenterIP:5480) and started to make a few configuration changes.  First up were assigning a hostname, setting the correct time zone, and setting a static IP … [Read more...]