Simulator Discussions

Is the simulator still supported for either vmware player or native windows?

WSANDERSATFLEXERA
4,203 Views

I could only find TGZ-balls of the simulator available for download. When gunzipped, the resulting tarfile is a bundle of vmdk files, and is not in a form than vmware player 6 (the current version) can import. Player 6 only supports .vmx, .wmc, .ova, and .ovf files.

Since there are no longer any free vmware products that are installable on Windows 7, is there a way I can get the simluator?

Or are the ISO versions Live CDs?

6 REPLIES 6

martinbreidenbach
4,203 Views

It should contain a VMX file. I just did install VSIM with cDOT 8.2 yesterday on VMware WS10 and there was a VMX file.

(and then I merged the split vmdk files into one file, updated to cDOT 8.2P5 and replaced the 1GB simulated disks with using 4GB ones).

WSANDERSATFLEXERA
4,203 Views

The vmx file contains only parameters pointing to VMDK files. Once I copy the VMDK files it refers to (DataONTAP-flat, DataONTAP-var, DataONTAP-nvram, DataONTAP-sim) over to the same directory as the VMX file I get an error "Error while powering on: The file specified is not a virtual disk."

I'll try copying all of the VMDK files and see what happens.

WSANDERSATFLEXERA
4,203 Views

Well, the VM starts but it crashes and ends up stuck in a pepetual crash-and-reboot cycle. The error is erased on screen too quickly to see. This whole setup seems not ready for prime time 😞

martinbreidenbach
4,203 Views

Did you press ctrl-c and wipe the disks ?

I think that's mentioned somewhere in the installation PDF.

Since I usually replace the virtual 1GB disks with bigger ones I do that anyway.

WSANDERSATFLEXERA
4,203 Views

Error is "WARNING: There do not appear to be any disks attached to the system. No root volume found."

martinbreidenbach
4,203 Views

Unzip the tarball (I used 7zip but)

Open VMX file with VMware player

start the VM

click into console window

when 'press ctl-c' message appears press ctrl-c

in menu select 4 to wipe disks

after disk wipe is finished you should have a usable simulator. That procedure is described in the installation PDF. I've done this several times in the past for different versions of the simulator (using VMware Workstation 9/10 or ESXi 5.1 where an additional step to convert the unsupported disk format is needed).

I never had to do any changes to the VMX file (well if I convert the split VMDK data file which contains the disk images into one big file I hve to tell the system to use that one but that's just remove hard drive 4 and add preexisting file as hard drive 4 type ide)

Which version of the simulator are you trying to use ? whats the file name (there are 4 files for 7m/cm and VMware Workstation/ESXi)? Are you running Linux or Windows ? You are running Player 6 on Windows 7?

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