Bootstrapping a data center remotely

Using a VM running vSphere connecting to an ESX server 2000 miles away over VPN, and using VNC to connect to a known Linux box on the same network as the ESX box, I was able to download enough ISOs to create a Windows 7 VM. The idea is to put vSphere Client on it, and use Microsoft Remote Desktop to connect to it. I can then download ISOs to its hard drive and create VMs with "ISO on local disk" option.

Had to download MS RDC. It's free now. This is great.

I am also starting to build up the first linux box. I used VNC on the other machine to download the ISO of Ubuntu 14.10 Desktop. Used the VSphere Client to install the machine. Of course, I had to use the vSphere Client to access the Desktop. Doing this from RDC is painful; typing often results in duplicated characters. So I installed openssh-server:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

And then I could ssh in from a Terminal on my machine. Ah, much better.

I still want desktop access, though. I enabled Desktop Sharing on the Linux VM. Alas, the Mac Screen Sharing could not connect to it, although it could connect to an Ubuntu 12 machine. My coworker point me to this article, and now the Linux machine is good to go.