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Creating an NT Server Test Lab Using VMware

/ May 11, 2018 — Interoperability

One thing we do quite often here at netadmintools.com is install and reinstall NT Server and friends over and over again. This article describes how to setup, configure, backup to tape, and restore an NT Server installation on Vmware.

We installed Vmware using the simple directions that came with the distribution, and then ran a wizard to configure Vmware for the NT Server 4.0 OS in the /vmi/nt4 directory. We then did a plain install of NT Server 4.0 in the virtual machine. After NT Server was all up and running, we shut down the NT 4.0 server and exited Vmware.

Here we have the files that were created by our NT 4.0 Server install:

srv-4:/vmi/nt4 # ls -l
total 122446
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Aug 7 12:15 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 1024 Aug 7 11:07 ..
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 534 Aug 7 11:07 nt4.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 124836864 Aug 7 12:15 nt4.dsk
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 42637 Aug 7 12:16 nt4.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8496 Aug 7 12:15 nt4.nvram

Let’s see how big these files are compressed and tarred up.
srv-4:/ # cd /
srv-4:/ # tar -cz /vmi/nt4/* > ruk.gz
tar: Removing leading `/' from absolute path names in the archive

srv-4:/ #
srv-4:/ # ls ruk* -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 38287360 Aug 7 12:24 ruk.gz

Wow! We get 3:1 compression using gzip (the z option in tar).

Let’s back up the directory to tape:
srv-4:/ # tar czf /dev/sd0 /vmi/nt4/*

Let’s view the files on the tape:
srv-4:/ # tar tvzf /dev/sd0
-rwxr--r-- root/root 534 1999-08-07 11:07 vmi/nt4/nt4.cfg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 124836864 1999-08-07 12:15 vmi/nt4/nt4.dsk
-rw-r--r-- root/root 42637 1999-08-07 12:16 vmi/nt4/nt4.log
-rw-r--r-- root/root 8496 1999-08-07 12:15 vmi/nt4/nt4.nvram

Let’s nuke the files and then restore from tape:
srv-4:/ # cd vmi
srv-4:/vmi # ls
. .. nt4
srv-4:/vmi # cd nt4
srv-4:/vmi/nt4 # rm *
lsrv-4:/vmi/nt4 # ls
. ..
srv-4:/vmi/nt4 #
srv-4:/ # cd /
srv-4:/ # tar xzvf /dev/sd0
vmi/nt4/nt4.cfg
vmi/nt4/nt4.dsk
vmi/nt4/nt4.log
vmi/nt4/nt4.nvram
srv-4:/ # cd /vmi/nt4
srv-4:/vmi/nt4 # ls
. .. nt4.cfg nt4.dsk nt4.log nt4.nvram
srv-4:/vmi/nt4 # ls -l
total 122446
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Aug 7 13:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 1024 Aug 7 11:07 ..
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 534 Aug 7 11:07 nt4.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 124836864 Aug 7 12:15 nt4.dsk
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 42637 Aug 7 12:16 nt4.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8496 Aug 7 12:15 nt4.nvram
srv-4:/vmi/nt4 #
All looks just fabulous.

One other thing that we did was get the Vmware X server to work correctly. The directions from Vmware don’t work with our SuSE 6.1 distribution because the link to the X server in the instructions point to the wrong place. We used:
srv-4:/var/X11R6/bin # ls -l
total 2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Aug 7 10:47 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 1024 Aug 6 11:45 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Aug 7 10:47 X -> /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_SVGA
srv-4:/var/X11R6/bin # rm X
srv-4:/var/X11R6/bin # ln -s /etc/vmware/XFCom_SVGA X
srv-4:/var/X11R6/bin # ls -l
total 2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Aug 7 13:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 1024 Aug 6 11:45 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Aug 7 13:55 X -> /etc/vmware/XFCom_SVGA
srv-4:/var/X11R6/bin #

OK, we kid you not. We have successfully loaded NT Server 4.0, the Option Pack, and Exchange Server 5.5 in one Vmware session. So very cool. Here is a screenshot of a PCAnywhere 9.0 session of our server configuration.

We plan to cook up lots of cool configurations and then simply save them on tape. We are also very happy that we can now run Linux on our econobox and still test NT 4.0 and other Backoffice applications on it. Vmware works fine for Windows2000 too, if you want to test out migrations, etc.

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