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
Create your vESX host
- 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)
- 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.
- make sure you have 2vCPU and 4 GB ram for ESXi 5.5
- If you want to run 64 bit VM inside this vESX host than enable Hardware virtualization and CPU/MMU virtualization
- 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
- Click on the host
- Go to “Configuration”
- Click on “Networking”
- Click “Properties” on the vSwitch
- Select the correct portgroup
- Click “Edit”
- Click “Security”
- Set “Promiscuous Mode” to “Accept”
- Click “Ok”
- Click “Close”
Hope this helps someone.
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