Make sure to enable VT in your bios if possible

I would think by now VMWare would know if they will be supporting Win2k8R2 (and Win7) on ESX Server v3.5.

I don't necessarily see myself as being untypical of customers out there who still have a sizable Windows 2000 VM presence in the field with the intent of migrating straight to Win2k8R2 VM's to leverage new features and I would sure like to know if I have to rush-ship (certainly undesired) vSphere media to 70+ remote locations so I can upgrade (oops, did I say upgrade? I meant ESX OS reinstall) if VMWare decides to snub the v3.5 and Win2k8R2 combo.

-Red

As Anton said there is experimental support. When and if there is official support ie sometime after the products have shipped then it will be official. If this is about a production environment why would you risk jumping on a platform the instant it is released or in this case before it is released. If you are in charge of some companies data, it is your responsibility to make sure that the corporate processes are protected. After some exhaustive testing and evaluation of the merits of using a new platform and watching forums for issues trends then you can make a decision to put something in place. Knowing whether something works is only relative. It may work well in one environment but fail miserably in another.

If you are currently using "Windows 2000 VM" then you obviously don't rush to support. I wouldn't suggest anyone deploy vSphere unless they have done adequate testing to determine it's suitability to their environment. W28k requires a lot more resources than w2k or w2k3. Just the RAM requirements alone should cause you concern. Fewer VMs per host. You do want to make sure your current environment is suitable for ANY move. Editorial no just common sense.

November 20th and total silence from VMware. When will 2008R2 and Windows 7 be offcially supported on ESX 3.5 or higher? I understand there is video driver problems, when will this be fixed?

VMware has been frustrating me lately. Fusion 3.0 was a failure out the door and now this.

I am not sure what your virtualization experience is, but your response "ESX 3.5 is 32-bit, and while it can run a 64-bit guest OS, I wouldn't recommend it" is incorrect. My experience has been different as I have been using VI3 for 3 years ever since ESX 3.0, and it has fully supported 64-bit operating systems, and 3.5 and 4.0 continue to do so today. It has everything to do with the Processor CPU, not the Service Console of ESX.

When you say 3.5 is 32-bit, you are referring to the Service Console which is in fact 32-bit, but it has nothing to do with the hypervisor that runs the guest operating system. The Hypervisor has full 64-bit support. I can understand how this can be confusing because when you SSH into a 3.5 host and do a 'uname -a' you see a 32-bit linux kernel. This is for management purposes only. In ESXi this doesn't even exist.

I believe what the author of this article is saying is "when will VMware officially support these operating systems?". Yes it works on 4.0, yes you can find tweaks for VMware tools for R2 graphics drivers, yes you can ignore the "(experimental)" tag, yes you can trick the OS type by saying it's vista,......BUT this is unacceptable behavior for such a large company who supports such expensive datacenters. Going silent for this long having "experimental" support for an OS that not only has passed RTM but public availability is quite strange. Before 2010 Q1 I would expect to see at least something on the subject.

I Google "ESX 4.0.1" everyday in hope that the next update of VMware vSphere will be available and support all the latest stuff Microsoft has had to offer. One day I will wake up a happy man!

To those that are on edge of upgrading production systems to 4.0 from 3.5 I can tell you this. The ESX upgrade to 4.0 was actually the least painful upgrade I've experienced with VMware (waking up to expired licenses with 3.5 Update 2 was so memorable!) . I recommend using the VMware Host Update utility, placing your hosts into maintenance mode, and using the ESX 4.0 ISO image to do the update. Quick, painless, and so far hasn't caused a single issue with the VMs. Of course you must upgrade to vSphere 4.0 which can be some work, but I have both production and development machines running without any downtime since the upgrade (500+ VMs)