ESXi 5 was just released couple of hours ago and of course I had to try it. But I didn’t have any HW at home to run it on. So I saw @BlueShiftBlog’s tweet about running the ESXi 5 on VMware Player and I decided to give it a try. And it works.
Here is what you need to do:
- Download ESXi 5 and vSphere Client
- Download VMware Player
- Install VMware Player
- Install vSphere Client
When creating a new virtual machine on VMware Player “Other 64-bit” needs to be selected as the guest OS version. I used the default Hard Disk size but changed the memory to 2GB, added other network adapter and also added other CPU.
ESXi 5 installer starts automatically after the virtual machine is configured and powered on (assuming that you selected the VM to boot from the ESXi iso). You will get an error message “HW virtualization is not enabled” but that can be ignored.
After the installation is done and ESXi has rebooted you can connect to it using vSphere Client. If you have DHCP enabled on your network you will see the IP address of the ESXi on the console window. If not then you need to configure network settings from Customize System.
I’m now running two ESXi’s on my laptop and might be able to squeeze one more ESXi installation on it with 2GB memory. 2GB might be bit overkill for the purpose that I’m using those for at this point.
vSphere client looks very similar to the previous version. Next thing would be installing VM on one of the ESXi’s and then vCenter on it. Maybe I leave that for tomorrow.
Here is couple of other blogs for some more information about the new features:
Henriwithani 
August 25th, 2011 at 10:37 am
Good tip thanks. Agreed, the machine type needs to be Other 64bit and the NICs need to be NAT, or else it won’t work.
October 30th, 2011 at 4:09 am
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February 12th, 2012 at 11:19 pm
[…] cache on VMware Player By henriwithani Just after the vSphere 5 was released I wrote a post about running ESXi 5 on VMware Player 3. It was an easy way to get to know the ESXi 5 and create a small home lab on your laptop. The […]
April 1st, 2012 at 12:47 am
Crazy how you can do virtualization inside another virtual image, then one could even go further and virtualize inside a Windows 2008 R2 with HyperV. Could go on for ever… It is a great way for testing and learning this newest technology, especially from a laptop computer when one is limited on hardware. I’m thinking about testing 2 different vSphere’s on the player and see of those two could still talk back and forth, it should.