To get started with CloVR using VMware, you will first need to download and install VMware Player and download the latest CloVR VMware/VirtualBox image. Once both of these steps have been completed, you will need to uncompress the CloVR image.
On a Mac this can be done simply by double-clicking on the file. To do this on a Linux machine, open a terminal, navigate to the directory where you saved the CloVR image and run the following command (where “clovr-standard.tgz” is the CloVR image you downloaded:
tar -xzvf clovr-standard.tgz
This command may take a few minutes to execute, depending on your computer’s performance. When finished, you should be able to open the uncompressed folder. If you are working on Windows, you may need to install a program like the freely available 7-Zip to unpack the .tgz file.
VMware Player/Workstation
Once the CloVR image has been uncompressed, open VMware Player and click on “Open an existing Virtual Machine” on the main screen.
In the Open Virtual Machine pop-up, find the “start_clovr.vmx” file inside the upacked CloVR image and click “Open.” VMware Player should now show a new window with CloVR running.
There are a few known issues regarding shared folders with VMware Player. Please see Troubleshooting CloVR on VMware Player for more information.
VMware Fusion
On the Mac operating system running CloVR via VMware requires the use of the VMware Fusion software; this software differs slightly from VMWare Player/Workstation.
Open the CloVR image by going to the File menu and choosing the Open option and selecting the vmx file that was unpacked.
The VM can be started up by clicking on the Start Up button:
The VM should start-up and be accessible in a separate window:
Accessing the CloVR Dashboard
Once a CloVR VM is running, one of the most important steps to take is to note the IP address assigned to the CloVR VM as it will be used to access the CloVR dashboard where all pipelines are started, monitored and controlled from.
The IP address can be obtained from the CloVR Admin Console as shown above. This IP address can be entered into a web-browser which should then direct to the CloVR dashboard.
