Mac Pro compatibility with installing ESXi 5.0

[trodemaster]

Starting a thread to discuss ESXi on Mac Pro hardware.

MacPro1,1

MacPro2,1

The first two generation Mac Pro's boot to black screen prompting to pick cd boot type 1 or 2. However no keyboard input is accepted. I suspect this may be solvable with some hacking.

MacPro3,1

MacPro4,1

MacPro5,1

The three most recent generation Mac Pro's install fine to standard sata drives.

I beleive that none of apple's hardware raid cards are workable for booting from. The most common fiber channel cards apple shiped with Mac Pro's from LSI also do not work. The Xraid still works if you connect it to a supported FC adapter however.

If you have other Mac + ESXi questions start your own thread Let's keep this one specific to installing ESXi 5.0 on Mac Pro hardware..

Blake

[laycock]

I was able to get this done a little bit easier, and make it so (I  think) future updates/patches will go on relatively effortlessly.

1) Install 5.0.0 build 381646 from CD/DVD, this just works.

2) Enable SSH remote administration via the vSphere client.

3) SSH to the server.

4) cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/

5) Find the patches/updates that you want to apply from http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal and download them via wget, e.g.

wget http://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/OFFLINE/release-328-20120312-212851/update-from-esxi5.0-5....

Note: Be sure to use http, not https, because wget on the vmware host does not seem to support SSL.

6) If your update requires that the virtual machines need to be shut down, be sure to do so now.

7) install the update like so: esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/update-from-esxi5.0-5.0_update01.zip

😎 If your update requires a reboot, reboot the host.

With this set of steps I was able to update my MacPro 1,1 all the way to build 768111, and never had to deal with trying to get the bootable USB drives to work, nor copying and restoring the efi/boot and efi/vmware files/folders.

[CharlesLaCour]

Great find.  After locating the build 381646 ISO I was able to easily install ESXi 5 on my MacPro1,1 and patch it to Update 1.

[GregMcM]

Great find.  After locating the build 381646 ISO I was able to easily install ESXi 5 on my MacPro1,1 and patch it to Update 1.

Does anyone know where I can find the 381646 ISO build to download?   I'm more than somewhat apprehensive of 'finding' the ISO out on the internet and I can't find any older versions on vmware's site to download.

Thanks.

[trodemaster]

That was a prerelease build so it's not generally available. My intention was to find a source for working booter files that are not provided by vmware to get things booting. I thought I saw that the MOH ESXi rescue CD had them but have not tested it myself.

Blake

[slovm]

laycock wrote:

I was able to get this done a little bit easier, and make it so (I  think) future updates/patches will go on relatively effortlessly.

1) Install 5.0.0 build 381646 from CD/DVD, this just works.

2) Enable SSH remote administration via the vSphere client.

3) SSH to the server.

4) cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/

5) Find the patches/updates that you want to apply from http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal and download them via wget, e.g.

wget http://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/OFFLINE/release-328-20120312-212851/update-from-esxi5.0-5....

Note: Be sure to use http, not https, because wget on the vmware host does not seem to support SSL.

6) If your update requires that the virtual machines need to be shut down, be sure to do so now.

7) install the update like so: esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/update-from-esxi5.0-5.0_update01.zip

😎 If your update requires a reboot, reboot the host.

With this set of steps I was able to update my MacPro 1,1 all the way to build 768111, and never had to deal with trying to get the bootable USB drives to work, nor copying and restoring the efi/boot and efi/vmware files/folders.

I hate to bump an old thread, but were you able to get 5.1 on your 1.1? Thanks. Also I tried to go to the find patch portal and no luck for 5.0.

[TimaDPP]

Did you ever get a reply to that question? We want to set up ESXi 5.1 on a Mac Pro, which is supported. But I need to add additional ethernet cards, preferably even 10 gb ethernet for NFS storage but I don't know which ones will work on ESXi 5.1.

[trodemaster]

I'm using some Intel 82599EB 10-Gig SFP+ cards in current generation mac pro's. They work quite well with both ESXi 5.0 and 5.1.

Blake

[mskippym]

I ended up buying some 4 port Intel server NIC's.  Since the OS is no longer OSX, you don't need to worry about drivers for OSX, just that it is on the hardware compatibility list for VMWare.  I had looked into the SmallTree NICs as they have the 1G and 10G adapters for OSX.  I figured they were using Intel cards with their drivers, the NIC's must be compatible with the Mac hardware.  Somewhere else I had found someone trying to use an Xserve with Linux and they had success with Broadcom cards also.

We have 2 Xserves 3,1 and 1 Mac Pro 5,1 all running 2 cards in each.  No problems with ESXi 5.0U1 and all virtual machines, OSX, FreeBSD, and Windows work beautifully.

MikeM.

[wirelessness]

Hi,

i don't have much experience with ESXI so forgive me.  I just bought my first Mac Pro and would love to play with this and run several VM's for various jobs. 

My question is, can I still use my main OSX VM as my local workstation using the graphics card output and access to all the ports?

[AmesRitter]

This is much simpler than it's made out to accomplish...to install ESXi 5.1 on a 1,1 MacPro all you need is the BOOTIA32.EFI from the VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.0.0-381646.x86_64.ISO or earlier. With that you can use Carbon Copy Cloner on the Mac to clone the latest 5.1 ISO to a USB drive and then replace the BOOTIA32.EFI on the 5.1 install with the one that works. That's it - attached the needed EFI if the forum will allow it.

[aaron-t]

I found an old macpro 2,1 and wanted to get esxi 5.1 on it as a backup incase my xserve dies. I started with a unetbootn esxi 5.1 USB, that freezes. So I took that bootia32.efi previously posted and put it /efi/boot (overwriting the old). That got the installer to boot and install to disk no problem. When it rebooted its now the same old problem again.

So then after some trial and error, lots of error, I came to this final solution. Enjoy.

Here are the final steps I took to get it working. You need two flash drives and a blank dvd. My flash drive is H: on windows and it's label is TINYRED:

Preperation:

1. burn ubuntu mac dvd
http://releases.ubuntu.com/quantal/ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64+mac.iso

This is a special cd that boots on my macpro at least. The regular cd wouldn't boot.

2. make esxi installer usb (5.1 current) using unetbootin for the esxi installer usb.
copy BOOTIA32.EFI to H:\EFI\BOOT

3. make usb with the good files from the old version of esxi that I've attached. I downloaded VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.0.0-381646.x86_64.iso from some scandelous website, installed it, and then booted ubuntu just to strip the /efi/boot and /efi/vmware folders.

plugin usb esxi installer to macpro
boot into usb
install esxi to local harddrive
reboot to ubuntu mac cd
open terminal
sudo mkdir /mnt/sexi
sudo mkdir /mnt/usb
sudo mount /dev/disk/by-label/ESXi /mnt/sexi
sudo mount /dev/disk/by-label/TINYRED /mnt/usb

sudo cp /mnt/usb/EFI-BOOT/* /mnt/sexi/efi/boot/
sudo cp /mnt/usb/EFI-VMWARE/* /mnt/sexi/efi/vmware/

take out the cd, remove the usb, and boot into vmware 5.1! It will hang on the white screen for 10 seconds or so, just wait for it.

[sheurich]

Thanks - this IA32 EFI worked perfectly on my MacPro1,1 for 5.1.0-799733.x86_64. Now instead of collecting dust in the attic, this 7-year old box is running modern workloads.

[robertwillett]

Tried this on ESXI 5.5 and it worked fine there as well. I did look at selling the Mac Pro 1,1 but it's got eight cores, 16GB of RAM and a nice case. By the time I sell the Mac, buy new kit, build it, test it etc, its not worth the hassle.

[vmbrian1]

Using these instructions, I got the ESXi 5.5 up and running on my MacPro1,1; however, I cannot login using any of the default passwords.Any suggestions?

* UPDATE *

I am an idiot. I completely forgot that I had set the root password during the install.

It's also worth noting that I was not able to get any of the ubuntu live CDs to boot. I also did not have access to an installed OSX. I had to:

1) Boot with OS X CD.

2) Write the ubuntu live image to a solid state drive(USB Drive wouldn't work) using these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/How%20to%20install%20Ubuntu%20on%20MacBook%20using%20USB%20Stick

3) I was then able to boot ubuntu on the SSD to do the boot file swaps.

[BobTob]

How did you get this to work, I did try ex 5.1 and 5.5 with my Mac Pro 2.1

All I get after changing the bootia32.efi is VMware Hypervisor Recovery, Bank 5 and Bank6 -- not a VMware boot bank.

I can not even install from usb.

Any ideas?

Bob

[DJmet]

У меня тоже такая проблема с Mac Pro 1.1

Сделал как написано не получилось. Записал на флешку, загрузился по <ALT> выбрал флешку, а оно или подвисает или начинает писать VMware Hypervisor Recovery, Bank 5 and Bank6

Помогите перепробовал 5.0, 5.1 даже 5.5 не как не могу побороть!!!!!!!!!

[grantgrismore]

Hey all,

I was following this thread for a while, then ran into another thread where others had been trying to run ESXi on the latest Mac Pro, and were having issues akin to the ones in this thread.

grasshopper pointed everyone to the latest beta program for ESXi 6.0, which I was able to install on my 2006 Mac Pro without a fuss.

Links to discussion and beta program bellow. Hope it helps.

ESXi 5.5 on Mac Pro 6,1

I have posted the current working solution in the private beta forums here:

https://communities.vmware.com/message/2397484#2397484

If you're not a Beta participant yet sign up:
https://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere-beta

PS - thanks again to HPReg for all your support!

-Mike
http://twitter.com/vmkdaily
http://vmkdaily.com

[jeremykemp]

Now that 6.0 is officially out and access to the beta forums is closed for new registrations, can you please repost your current working solution here?

[signalsout]

This is way too convoluted guys. Heres what you do. You install with mbr option... During the 5 second boot screen you press whatever key it is to get to a command prompt. press space and type in "formatwithmbr" without the quotes and press enter. You may not be able to get it to boot on your computer. You can use refind or refit. or pull the drive and do the install on a PC and put it back into your mac. It will install and boot fine. If there is more than one operating system installed it will likely boot to the other os. If it's the only OS it will take awhile to load as well. There are ways you can boot to a Mac OS X Install disk and set your default boot drive. It will make it boot faster..