Yesterday I fired up a new ESXi host and began to lay down a SLES guest.  I wanted to install Teaming (minus) Conferencing.  The first gotcha I ran into was that the 20 user starter pack isn’t quite like previous starter packs for other products which worked right out of the box.  To get a license key, you have to fill out a form, get a call from a Novell rep, and they would put the order in.  So, in 5-7 business days, I should get my license key.

As an aside, I don’t see the point of having to wait, or even talk to anyone at all.  All this process does is put up a barrier for people who are even vaguely interested in the product.  In my opinion, it’s a bad policy.  Novell needs to get any of their branded software into the hands of anyone who might even want to try it.  Making anything even remotely exclusive just can’t help them try to stay relvent in the market place.  You can put application virtualization in the same boat.  Time bombed or limited software is something Microsoft might be able to get away with, but that old thinking probably won’t help you unless you’re that 800 pound gorilla and don’t need inovative ways to compete.

The next gotcha involves licensing as well.  The 60 day evaluation license apparently isn’t named correctly.  Whatever the file you download is called, it has to be renamed to license-key.xml.

Next up, the option to install the DB may or may not work.  It didn’t for me, although I’m not entirely sure why.  See this post on the forums to get past that issue.

Finally, the initial install screen didn’t scale correctly for me.  There was an absurd amount of empty space between the dialog and the buttons.  I had to change the resolution to 1024×768, enable remote administration, and use tightVNC to be able to see the installer.

Now have the product installed.  I’m starting to work my way though customizing and getting things set.  I’ll report back with any updates.  Also, ESXi absolutely rocks.  I can only imagine how cool being able to use vmotion would be.