This is a guide as much for me, as much as it is for anyone else. I came to the conclusion I wanted a testbed for Reposado and Margarita, and as much as Clayton Burlison has the install of Reposado and Margarita on lock, I needed a refresher on how to create a new Ubuntu VM on my ESXi-capable Mac Mini.

First up, in VMware Fusion, connect to the server. File > Connect to Server… will give you access to the virtual machines stored on the server. You will then see a list of all the VMs currently on the server, active or not:

From here, you can click the + at top left to add a new VM:

Since we are putting the VM directly on the server and not our local machine, select “Create a virtual machine on a remote server.”

Next up, you will be asked to select the server. Choose your local ESXi host.

From here, you get to select which Datastore you want to store the new virtual machine on. If you had multiple volumes, you could select it here, whereas I just have my internal storage volume.

VMware will then ask you to select a Hardware Version. There might be reasons to choose earlier versions, depending on what your local situation is like, but I’m up to date, so I’m choosing version 11.

Next, you get to choose which Network you’ll put it on. If you had multiples, you’d want to select the correct VLAN. I just have one, so I’m keeping it right where it is. You can also have VMs that have no network interface, and that’s an option here, too.

Since I’m running Ubuntu Server, 64-bit, for the final project, I’m selecting this version also for my sandbox VM.

If you wanted to opt to use UEFI or Secure Boot, here would be your opportunity! Ubuntu doesn’t need that, so I’m just clicking through.

Last but not least, it’s time to pick your disk size. Since I’m using Reposado and Margarita, it’s a 200GB minimum to enter this party.

Now that we have our virtual machine, we need to get our copy of Ubuntu 17.10 Server. I grabbed mine from the Release Notes Page, which includes links to the Ubuntu download system. As long as you have an ISO, you should be fine to get started. Before you turn the VM on, you need to attach that ISO to the VM’s CD-ROM Drive. In the Virtual Machine’s Settings, you can select CD-ROM, and then specify the locally-stored ISO file to use as a connected volume.

Once you have selected the Ubuntu ISO file to attach as a CD, you are free to boot your virtual machine, and you’ll be presented with the next few screens as part of the process.

Select your preferred language for the Installer to use.

Select the option to Install Ubuntu Server

Select your preferred language for the __operating system__ to use

Select the preferred region for the __operating system__ to use.

Pick the keyboard you’re using

Set up your admin username and password. Don’t forget these. Store them in a 1Password item if you can.

Set your timezone

Also set up how you want the volume to be formatted. Defaults are fine, but you might choose to use Logical Volume Manager to handle your storage.

Now, it will install the OS and you’ll get an occasional screen to set up an HTTP proxy, allow security updates automatically, etc.

Then you can choose to install just the server, or a bunch of extra tools. Since I’m using Clayton’s guide for installing Reposado and Margarita, and it has the needed download commands, I’m just going to take the OS as it’s given to me.

More installing will occur here. Get a glass of water, you’re probably not hydrated enough today.

After this, you’ll be prompted to setup the GRUB Bootloader. Since this is the only Linux install on the virtual disk (It is, right? It would be really weird if it weren’t.) you can accept this configuration.

And after that all completes, it’s time to get rolling through to your VM!

You can eject the CD-ROM on the next startup cycle.

Once we’ve got the box up, we want to install sshd to allow for remote access, because while it’s nice to have direct command line via the VM, ssh is so much more convenient!

We’re going to need to do a couple commands here to get it:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openssh-server

This will install the standard openssh server and prepare it for use, allowing you to login remotely. There’s a million fiddly bits associated with opens, and you may want to customize it so that two-factor works, or machine tokens like YubiKey tokens act as your key. That’s an exercise best left for the reader. For now, I’m not publicly exposing that interface as part of this process.

Now that you have an Ubuntu 17.10 server ready to go, you can follow all the instructons of Clayton’s guide for Ubuntu 14.04 for installing Reposado and Margarita (it all still works as of 17.10!)