Issues for Hardware on VMs created as GPT Partitions on ESXi 5.5 / 6.0

[thbet]

Hi,

Assuming that I have an ESXi 5.5 / 6.0 certified hardware, and I intend to create a VM with the following settings using ESXi 5.5 / 6.0 Free Edition:

HDD: 2.5TB (split into 2 virtual disks, 500GB, 2TB)

Guest OS: Either Windows Server 2008 R2 / 2012 R2

UEFI Mode: Yes

I have 3 questions:

1) As this will be my first time creating such a VM, hence are there any issues with VMs running under UEFI Mode on ESXi 5.5 / 6.0, in terms of hardware support, etc?

2) What are the settings required to create an GPT-partition VMs in ESXi vSphere Client?

3) Any best practices that I can find for creating and using of GPT-partition VMs in ESXi 5.5 / 6.0?

Regards,

thbet

[Dee006 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

1) As this will be my first time creating such a VM, hence are there any issues with VMs running under UEFI Mode on ESXi 5.5 / 6.0, in terms of hardware support, etc?

No

2) What are the settings required to create an GPT-partition VMs in ESXi vSphere Client?

Need to change the boot setting to EFI in advance tab.

3) Any best practices that I can find for creating and using of GPT-partition VMs in ESXi 5.5 / 6.0?

Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server

For more information refer the below doc

Using EFI/UEFI firmware in a VMware Virtual Machine

[thbet]

Thanks for the response. In terms of accessing the VMware EFI implementation inside a VM based on the link Using EFI/UEFI firmware in a VMware Virtual Machine, I understand that the firmware implementation may be less mature, but do I need to set any settings in the VMware EFI BIOS Setup in order to take advantage of UEFI features? Kindly advise.

Regards,

thbet

[dariusd]

Our UEFI setup doesn't have many options to tweak.  Usually, just choosing EFI firmware is sufficient for most situations.

If you just want to do a regular UEFI installation of a modern Windows guest OS, you should simply be able to choose "EFI" for the virtual machine's firmware and then go ahead and install the OS inside the VM as normal – it will be using the EFI/UEFI firmware.

If there are specific features of EFI/UEFI firmware that you're interested in and which aren't covered in that linked document, let me know what specifically you are looking for and I will try to provide answers. 

Cheers,

--

Darius

[thbet]

Hi Darius,

Thanks for the answer. I will try to create the VM and install Windows Server 2008 R2 / 2012 with EFI / UEFI firmware enabled and see how it goes. As for the specific features of EFI/UEFI firmware that need to be enabled in UEFI setup, I will post my required features on another thread if there are any issues.

Regards,

thbet