Application to Scan Machine for Compatibility with ESX

[JPettigrew]

I would like to install ESX on a machine I have just to mess around with and make some VM's. I don't know if the machine is compatible to run ESX and I'm wondering if there's an app that will scan my hardware and tell me if I can run ESX. If not maybe someone knows if I can run it, my specs are:

AMD Phenom II x4 965 quad-core 3.4ghz cpu

6 GB of RAM

Thanks in advance!

[guyrleech]

Post moved to the ESX community since the VMware Community Help community is intended to be used for help with the communities themselves rather than VMware products. But having said that, it's not a problem and welcome to the communities.

There are HCL's around but a quick, non-destructive, test is to boot off the ESX media and check that it finds a compatible NIC, storage controller and storage since it is these rather than CPU that are usually the blockers to running ESX. If it can't find a compatible NIC, you can probably add an Intel one relatively cheaply. With some lower end/whitebox kit, ESX doesn't like the storage being RAIDed but works fine when set in the BIOS to non-RAID.

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[JPettigrew]

Ok, apologies for wrong section post and thanks for the welcome. Ok I do have a RAID 0 set up on my machine so that would cause problems with ESX or just not even allow it to install?

[guyrleech]

If you boot off the ESX media, it will fail to allow you to install if it can't find compatible storage and as long as you don't continue with the installation, you can quite before it actually destroys existing disk content, which it will need to do. We've had this issue with HP ML115 servers which have on board SATA RAID - with it enabled it sees no disks and the install fails but with it turned off, it installs and works fine. If the install goes ok then it should work but again this is quick test, post install.

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[golddiggie]

Download ESXi 4.1 (or 4.0 update 2), get a GOOD USB flash drive 2-8GB in size (I favor Sandisk Cruzer flash drives, since they've always worked for me) and install onto the flash drive. You'll still need to have the compatible NIC in the system. Depending on the make/model of what you're working with, or the motherboard if it's a whitebox, your onboard NIC might (or might not) work... Typically the higher grade/quality Intel and Broadcom (NetXtreme 57xx series) Gb NIC's will work (Intel server grade add-on cards also typically work, such as the Pro1000 MT and GT)... If the RAID controller doesn't have BBWC (Battery Backed Write Cache) then it's a software RAID controller which won't present drives in a RAID array to ESX/ESXi. At best, you'll see the drives individually, just as if there was no RAID configuration at all.

With the USB flash drive install method (simply set the flash drive as the target) you'll need to make sure your system's bios supports booting from USB flash drives. Check the settings to make sure it will allow you to do that before you try it at all. You will need to make sure you enable the virtualization settings within the system bios too. Since you're running an amd chip, I can't give you those settings... I could if you were using Intel (especially Xeon) processors... A lot also depends on the bios itself that your rig is using...

If you have no joy with the system you're trying with, get a decent setup powered by Xeon's... I've had extended (great) success with a Dell workstation tower (over 2-1/2 years now) running ESXi... Using dual quad core Xeon's it doesn't have any host processor power issues (very rarely using more than one core worth of MHz)... Depending on how many VM's you're looking to run, you'll want more RAM... 6GB will allow you to run a couple of VM's, as long as you don't go to Server 2008, or things that use a decent amount of RAM... You could run a handful of Linux VM's, depending on what they're doing...

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[JPettigrew]

Installing onto a USB flash drive will preserve all the data on my HDD's?

[golddiggie]

Installing to an USB flash drive won't touch your local drives... That is, unless you go and try to make them into datastores after the install has completed (to house your VM's)...

Running off the USB flash drive will also give you a decent idea if ESXi will run stable on your hardware. IF you plan to run off of local drives, after you test it out, then I would grab a RAID controller (with BBWC) that's on the HCL for ESXi 4.x (I would go with 4.1)...

Also make sure you don't try to make your LUN's/datastores over the size limit (2TB-512B per LUN) or you won't get the correct amount of space (it will show you the difference after the 2TB-512B mark)... I would not go with too much space initially, for local datastores. If you end up needing more than 2TB (total) of space, get a SAN... You can get decent chassis (for home or test/dev labs) for under $2500 (plus drives)...

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