Create a VM with total physical RAM?

[cookieme]

I want to virtualise ESXi 4 on my MacBook Pro. However, I only have 2GB RAM and ESXi 4 requires a minimum 2GB.

I have posted in the ESXi community ()and there is a workaround for using ESXi with less RAM, but the catch is that I first need to run the installation with 2GB.

Basically, I have tried to create a VM with 2GB, but the maximum I can use is 1840MB. Is there anything I do with Fusion to increase this limit? I understand that I'm running a host OS and that too requires some RAM, but just to get through the installation of ESXi is it not possible to boost the VM RAM to 2GB and have the host OS increase the swap file to deal with the lack of RAM?

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks

[gbullman]

You need more physical RAM. Even if you could get the install to work with only 1840 MB of RAM, I can't imagine that Mac OS X will run very well on 200 Meg of RAM which is all that would be left.

Fusion actually sets aside the RAM you assign to it and Mac OS needs RAM to run. In my opinion you'll end up wasting a lot of time trying to overcome this and end up getting the RAM to make it work.

[admin]

I would try to borrow a system with more than 2 GB RAM for the initial setup.

[cookieme]

I would try to borrow a system with more than 2 GB RAM for the initial setup.

Yeah, I wish I knew someone who could help me out, but unfortunately all the Macs I have access to have 2 GB

You wouldn't be able to help me out

EDIT: Would someone be willing to create a virtual machine and install VMware ESXi 4 and then give it to me some how via an uploading site or similar? I can provide exact details how to setup the virtual machine and the ESXi 4 installation process if needed. It is very simple and should take approx. 20 min.

I would be very grateful if someone could help as I am limited by my physical RAM.

Thanks

[cookieme]

Anyone willing to help me with my request?

[asatoran]

Anyone willing to help me with my request?

I suspect the issue that may be discouraging others is how to transport the finished VM to you. Even if you're going to use a separately created VMDK or SAN for storage, let's assume that the boot disk for this ESX VM is 2GB, and compresses down to 1GB. (I haven't bothered to look at the size of my vSphere installations lately.) How does one get the VM to you? Not everyone runs their own FTP site or similar. Set up a torrent? From the VM creator's perspective, how long does he have to seed the files? You see, it's not necessarily trivial.

Additionally, I noticed this line from page 14 of the "ESXi Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide":

Running...four virtual machines with 512MB RAM requires that the ESXi 4.0 host be equipped with approximately 4GB RAM, which includes 2048MB for the virtual machines.

This imples that ESX4 by itself will use 2GB of RAM so you might not be able to run any VMs on a 2GB host.

So in the long run, IMHO, I think it would benefit you more to bite the bullet add some RAM to your physical machines, unless you only plan to look at the vSphere client. Not trying to discourage you, but suggesting you may want to take a more realistic view.

[cookieme]

Anyone willing to help me with my request?

I suspect the issue that may be discouraging others is how to transport the finished VM to you. Even if you're going to use a separately created VMDK or SAN for storage, let's assume that the boot disk for this ESX VM is 2GB, and compresses down to 1GB. (I haven't bothered to look at the size of my vSphere installations lately.) How does one get the VM to you? Not everyone runs their own FTP site or similar. Set up a torrent? From the VM creator's perspective, how long does he have to seed the files? You see, it's not necessarily trivial.

Additionally, I noticed this line from page 14 of the "ESXi Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide":

bq. Running...four virtual machines with 512MB RAM requires that the ESXi 4.0 host be equipped with approximately 4GB RAM, which includes 2048MB for the virtual machines.

This imples that ESX4 by itself will use 2GB of RAM so you might not be able to run any VMs on a 2GB host.

So in the long run, IMHO, I think it would benefit you more to bite the bullet add some RAM to your physical machines, unless you only plan to look at the vSphere client. Not trying to discourage you, but suggesting you may want to take a more realistic view.

Hi asatoran! I take your point with regards to how to get the VM to me. However, I think that you have missed my intent from my first post.

I am not planning on running ANY VMs nor access ESXi with the vClient. I am only interested in the ESXi hypervisor because I want to do some testing with the busybox, i.e. testing scripts. I don't want to do this on my production system.

Since ESXi can be installed on a 2GB USB stick and it has a very small footprint. I think that you can get away with creating a VM with 1GB VMDK. One simple and free option to upload the VM if it compresses and does not exceed 1GB is to use megaupload.com. There are other options but here you wouldn't need to split the archive into parts.

Anyway, my request for help still stands. Thanks

[admin]

unfortunately all the Macs I have access to have 2 GB

I missed this before, but why does it have to be a Mac? Does Workstation not do this?

[admin]

I just tried creating an ESXi 4 virtual machine. It takes up less than 300 MB on disk (though this doesn't compress much, only down to about 275 MB) and will boot with 1.125 GB RAM (not with 1 GB, though).

cookieme, if you really need someone to do this, I can help.

[mudaltsov · Accepted solution]

You may be able to edit the .vmx file and change the memsize option to be 2048 or larger. Fusion is able to start a VM with more memory that the host, the UI just prevents common users from exceeding the typically safe limits.

I'm not entirely sure what would happen if the VM actually tries to use all the memory. Hopefully it will just swap and run slow. Of course the worst case is that it crashes.

[cookieme]

unfortunately all the Macs I have access to have 2 GB

I missed this before, but why does it have to be a Mac? Does Workstation not do this?

Yes, you can do this on Workstation, but I only use a Mac.

[cookieme]

I just tried creating an ESXi 4 virtual machine. It takes up less than 300 MB on disk (though this doesn't compress much, only down to about 275 MB) and will boot with 1.125 GB RAM (not with 1 GB, though).

cookieme, if you really need someone to do this, I can help.

Thank you very much etung for offering to help!! However, mudaltsov has the solution and it works great! Who knew it was as easy as modifying the vmx file!!!

[cookieme]

You may be able to edit the .vmx file and change the memsize option to be 2048 or larger. Fusion is able to start a VM with more memory that the host, the UI just prevents common users from exceeding the typically safe limits.

I'm not entirely sure what would happen if the VM actually tries to use all the memory. Hopefully it will just swap and run slow. Of course the worst case is that it crashes.

Thank you mudaltsov!!! I quit all my applications as a precaution and modified the vmx file with the minimum required RAM, i.e. 2048. The installation went fine and I can now experiment with some scripts in the busybox of ESXi 4.

Btw eventhough I set the VM RAM to 2048, my Mac was responding well and when looking at the Activity Monitor VMware Fusion was not using more than 300-400MB RAM and there was no increase in the swap file.

Thanks again!