ESXI 7.0 on Proliant DL380 G5

[Fidel_de_la_Osa]

Good afternoon everyone.

I am in a company carrying out practices in which they have proposed me to implement kubernetes in vmware, the company has given me 2 proliant DL380 g5 (Intel XEON X5460 3.16Ghz) in which I am trying to install the ESXI 7, I know it is not compatible because fault of the processor compatibility what I have tried the command allowLegacyCPU = True both as a command and modifying the bootable usb and implementing it there. I have also tried to install it from a cd in case the problem was the usb but I still can't install it. Any idea what it can be or how I install it?

Thanks in advance.

[scott28tt]

@Fidel_de_la_Osa 

Moderator: Please create threads in the area for the product used - moved to ESXi Discussions

[bluefirestorm]

The X5460 CPU does not have EPT. EPT is used to manage the virtual RAM for ESXi VMs. EPT has been required since ESXi 6.7.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/33087/intel-xeon-processor-x5460-12m-cache-3-16...

You have to find different hardware to install ESXi 7.0.

[daphnissov]

That hardware is seriously so old, you can forget the idea of even 6.7. Your options are:

1. Tell your company the ancient hardware you've been given is better suited at the electronics recycler, but if that's all you have Kubernetes will need to be installed on bare metal.
2. Find somehow a copy of ESXi 5.5 and maybe that'll work.

[Fidel_de_la_Osa]

Thanks for the answers.

I cannot ask my company to change hardware because it was what they had to leave me. They use more modern servers so I wanted to replicate their configuration so that I could practice and configure kubernetes but if I cannot configure esxi 7 I do not know how I will do it, maybe I will ask them to leave me a part of the server to configure it but I can not improve the proliant

[Fidel_de_la_Osa]

Well maybe what I haven't said is that I have 2 proliant that I want to cluster them, so I can't use the combination for better performance? surely the problem of the ept would continue

[bluefirestorm · Accepted solution]

Don't waste any more time with these two DL380 G5 servers with ESXi (any version). They are around 13 years old now. Clustering two old servers with old CPUs does not make a cluster modern and powerful; it just makes a cluster with the same old CPUs/old technology.

These G5 servers cannot even run VMware Workstation Pro/Player version 14 (current version is 16). EPT is also required for 64-bit nested virtualisation with VMware ESXi or Workstation Pro/Player. Without EPT, you can only run 32-bit OS VM inside another VMware VM. That is why you don't even have workaround of installing ESXi 7.0 as a VM using VMware Workstation/Player.

You would find that EPT is required with other hypervisors especially with nested virtualisation.

You don't have much options with such old hardware. You could try installing K8s as bare metal but I suspect you would run into problems with it as well.

[Fidel_de_la_Osa]

I will speak with the administrator of the company to see if he gives me a solution regarding the hardware, again thank you very much

[Victorf_16]

I could run 6.0 version, I just edited the boot typing shift + O and written allowLegacyCPU=true