since im trying to set up a home lab i needed to have more esx host. so i started to look into nested ESX host
I found a lot of blogs out there for vSphere 5.0 and 5.1. but few for vSphere 5.5

finally this blog helped me on the right path
https://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8970

for nested esx 5.0 look at these blogs from William Lam or Duncan Epping.
http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/07/how-to-enable-support-for-nested-64bit.html

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/06/12/creating-a-nested-lab/

first i checked if my hardware supports nested hardware virtualization

https://fqdn of your esxhost or ip address/mob/?moid=ha-host&doPath=capability

look for nestedHVsupport if its true. make sure you enable VT-x and EPT or AMD-V and RVI in the BIOS of the host

nestedHV

Create your vESX host

  1. start the VMware webclient and create a vm with a standard OS red hat enterprise linux 6 (64 bit) but do not start the vm yet, and make sure you chose hardware version 10 (with version 4 to 8 you will need additional configuration which im not going to cover in this blog)
    vmoption
  2. Edit the settings of your vm en go to VM options tab. Under guest OS choose other, now you can choose vmware esx 5.x under Guest OS version.
  3. make sure you have 2vCPU and 4 GB ram for ESXi 5.5
  4. If you want to run 64 bit VM inside this vESX host than enable Hardware virtualization and CPU/MMU virtualization
    CPU - MMU - HV
  5. Install ESXi 5.5 inside the vm

The following step is maybe not necessary but since every other homelab has this configured i figured to do it too.

enable promiscuous mode

  1. Click on the host
  2. Go to “Configuration”
  3. Click on “Networking”
  4. Click “Properties” on the vSwitch
  5. Select the correct portgroup
  6. Click “Edit”
  7. Click “Security”
  8. Set “Promiscuous Mode” to “Accept”
  9. Click “Ok”
  10. Click “Close”

Hope this helps someone.