Installing in a Hyper-V VM

[reminisc3]

Hello all,

I am looking for a way to install ESXi in a Hyper-V VM. I understand that this 'defeats the purpose' - but really what I am trying to do is setup a lab for testing. There are various instructions online regarding the installation of ESXi 5.5 in a Hyper-V, see:

Vmware ESXI within Hyper-v (server 2012) networking issue

I went through the entire thread and was actually able to import the tulip driver into the 6.0 ISO and *successfully* installed ESXi into the Hyper-V VM.

The issue I am having is that I am unable to ping the IP of the ESXi host VM and obviously unable to download the tools package at http://IP_OF_THE_VM

I am using a Hyper-V VM with 8GB of Ram allocated, 2vCPUs, and a legacy network adapter (external virtual switch).

Perhaps the driver that was packaged for the 5.5 version does not work with 6.0? Any known workarounds?

Thanks

[reminisc3]

All,

I figured out the issue. After enabling 'Source' Port Mirroring in my Hyper-V VM - I was able to ping the VM and access the tools page.

In case anybody is looking for basic instructions:

1) Download fresh ESXI 6.0 ISO

2) Download ESXi-Customizer (http://www.v-front.de/p/esxi-customizer.html)

3) Download Tulip VIB for Hyper-V NICs (see attached)

4) Create 1st Gen Hyper-V VM (Decent amount of RAM, 2vCPUs, 10GB VHD, **Legacy Network Adapter** ) (2nd Generation VM = Frozen Install for me)

5) Configure the 'Legacy Network Adapter' with 'Mac Spoofing' enabled and Port Mirroring set to 'Source'

6) Use the customizer to rebuild the ISO with the attached VIB

7) Mount newly created ISO to DVD in VM

😎 Install ESXI 6.0

9) Enjoy testing

If you are in an environment with no monitor / peripherals - you will need to boot with ' ignoreHeadless=TRUE' appended to the command line (SHIFT+O). If you get stuck at 'Relocating Modules' - this should fix that.

To make this permanent after install execute:

esxcfg-advcfg -k TRUE ignoreHeadless

I'd love to hear if anybody else has similar use cases or issues while setting this up.

Thanks

[cykVM]

Hi,

we just had a longer discussion on a nested ESXi 5.5 in Hyper-V with a more complex network setup here: Virtualised ESXi - Network issues

cykVM