Category Archives: VMWare

This category is for articles that relate to virtualization technology called VMWare ESXi

Zoneminder: Powerful Open Source Security Camera Monitoring

Zoneminder is an extremely powerful open source utility which I believe can completely revolutionize the security camera market.  What previously cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to build and implement and usually required hiring external installers and support people can now be done with free software and hardware you may already own.  I have used this software for the last year or so, and have found it remarkably straightforward to use.

Like most open source software it can be tricky to get configured and running at first.  So I have put together this document on how I configured my zoneminder system at home.  This isn’t exactly an installation guide, since your install will likely be very different from mine, but consider this more of a planning guide.  It can be used to help you plan and implement your own zoneminder based setup.
Continue reading →

ESXi 5 and Windows 7 Media Center: No Video or Audio

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Windows 7 Media Center.  It’s a remarkably stable product, considering it’s from Microsoft.  And the ability to use an Xbox 360 as a media center extender, bringing live TV and DVR functions to any TV with an Xbox is probably the best part.

It’s also no secret I love virtualization.   Why run 4 different systems when 1 moderately powerful system can do the same.

So I guess it’s no surprise that I did the highly unrecommended thing and installed Windows 7 Media Center on a virtual machine.

This actually works, and it works great. Continue reading →