And so this started today with a Twitter post. If you know it or not I am a big enthusiast of trying to install ESX on all kinds of hardware - especially Whiteboxes that are not on the HCL. I have tested it on a number of HP, Dell and IBM desktops. The great thing about this is - it mostly works, it is completely not supported, but a lot of fun to do. But to lug around with a desktop to present demos, is not always the most convenient thing in the world - to put it mildly.
What-if (or as you would say it in Powershell -whatif) you could create a system, that has a full demonstration environment of multiple VM's - and all of this on your LAPTOP!
So I looked around on the Web and found a few mentions of people who have done this. What kind of problems they ran into and what was possible or not. The consensus is to Install a Base OS, Workstation on top of that, ESX as a VM, and then VM's onto that ESX VM. The consensus about this as well was "IT IS AS SLOW AS A TORTISE!". ESX on bare metal should be much much faster,
So my adventure started with this:
- Lenovo T400 Laptop 267812G - Intel Core2 Duo T9400 2.53GHz with 2GB RAM
- ESX4i build 171294
The laptop:
Started out in the BIOS, enabled Intel VT
SATA was set as AHCI
And off we go
Install Screen
Recognizes the Disk
And 4 minutes later
All hardware detected out of the box - Network card included
Next was to connect to the laptop with the VI client.
Now all I have to do is find out why I cannot power on a machine. Every time I started a VM the laptop froze - completely! Hard reboot and the machine came back up OK but the VM was no longer registered.
Have to look into that further
Hope you enjoyed the ride.
17 comments:
This is excellent. I am looking to install vSphere 4 on a SFF desktop, without adding any new hardware. Anything out of the box that you can suggest??
I have only tested this on the laptop post in the post. I do know for a fact that it also works on a Lenovo T61 as well. I have not tested it on other hardware besides that
Maish,
Did you ever get this working (no freezing)?
Hi! And what about accessing ESX by this laptop. I mean that esx has no VI-client. You need another computer|laptop to access your ESX.
What may be the solution of this problem?
The solution would have to be connecting another computer to use the VI client to manage it. Is beats the heck out of having to "shlep" around a desktop with you though
You could abstract this one more level and run vSphere in Workstation 7. It is listed as an "Educational" feature set in Workstation 7. Then you could run vCenter in a different VM. Advantage: Power off the lab and still use my laptop for work.
Hp DC 7800 SFF is pure ESXi 4.0 Native Ready!
I order to install Esx 4.0 you need another sata/raid controller than the on board
and of course you need 2GB+ of memory at least
And as for the Laptops.. Dell Lattitude D630 is surely ESXi 3.5 Compatible and i thing also ESXi 4.0
To provide services to small organizations now we are proudly says that we have big corporate clients. We have a proven track record of servicing clients. laptops in pakistan
Thank you for this Information.
FWIW, ever since installing the latest BIOS and/or ESX 4.1, I can no longer reproduce the freezing that occurs on occasion when starting VMs on the T400! Yay!
I would like to appreciate the work of blog author that the person provided us with an extremely excellent information
Hp DC 7800 SFF is pure ESXi 4.0 Native Ready!
I order to install Esx 4.0 you need another sata/raid controller than the on board
and of course you need 2GB+ of memory at least
I'm trying to do a similar project with a brand new Lenovo G570 (I5-2430M & 8 GB of RAM). I'm trying to install ESXi 5.0 on a clean HD. It boots from the CD, it starts loading, recognizes the CPU and the RAM but, it gets hung-up when it tries to detect the NIC. It gives me a "No Network Adapter" message and instructs me to reboot just to do the same thing. The laptop has an Atheros AR81 Family fast Ethernet adapter.
I located a linux driver for the Atheros NIC but can't figure out how to install it since ESXi won't complete the installation on the HD.
Any suggestions?
Frank ()
Hi Frank, and thanks for your comment.
I have never tried this with ESXi 5.0
Perhaps this might help you with finding and installing the correct driver
http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1876&hilit=Atheros+AR81
Hp DC 7800 SFF is pure ESXi 4.0 Native Ready!
I order to install Esx 4.0 you need another sata/raid controller than the on board
and of course you need 2GB+ of memory at least
Good article very useful to me ^ ^
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