Linux download working server

To build on Dave's post Ubuntu has their Ubuntu Server Guide which will walk you through setting it up. On top of that there are a ton of websites devoted to setting up other programs on Ubuntu.

I have never heard of a Linux distribution that you could download as a working Linux distribution as hardware and needs vary from person to person.

I think Oracle has some pre-built VM's you can download, but they are probably not built for VMware, but rather for VirtualBox.

Personally I prefer installing my VM's myself, so I use iso's. You can download the iso's from the distro's sites. For example a good Linux Server distro is Zentyal, which is based on Ubuntu Server. It is very easy to setup and manage. It is modular so you can decide what server options you need. Once installed it is managed via your web-browser, so it is very easy to manage from a remote PC.

http://www.zentyal.org/

The development (community) version is free, while the other versions aren't free (you need to pay for a subscription, and you get support for that, while the community edition the support is limited to the zentyal forums and online documentation).

If I understand your question correctly you would like to migrate your running linux server to a VirtualMachine configuration?

VMWare has the tool "VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Client" freely downloadable from vmware.com which helps you do this very smoothly in most cases.

If this fails there are several more ways to go but they usually all mean taking down the running server and migrating it manually.

https://www.turnkeylinux.org/ has a lot of pre-built Linux 'servers' where sites Iike http://www.distrowatch.com have a complete overview of every distribution out there and where to download them.