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suhag79
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Longmode required to run 64 bit Virtual machine - ESXi5

I have one PC with intel i3 64 bit processor and intel VT enable  in BIOS. On top of this i have installed windows 7 64 bit ultimate and then installed Vmware workstation 7.

On this woekstation i have installed ESXi5 without any problem and when i log in to VI cline tof ESXi5 and when i tried to create 64 bit VM, it give me an error as below, while booting the VM.

This Virtual Machine is configured for 64 bit guest OS. However, 64 bit operation is not possible. Longmode is disable for this virtual machine.

Please find attached snapshot of the error and virtual machine configuration.

I am 100% sure that Intel VT is enable in BIOS.

Please help on this.

Regards,

Suhag Desai

VCP410

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Dave_Mishchenko
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If you're wanting to run nested 64 bit guests then the base hypervisor has to ESXi 5 / Workstation 8 or Fusion 4.  For 32 bit nested guests that is not the case.

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Dave_Mishchenko
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To run a 64 bit nested VM the you need to be able to virtualize VT-x to the ESXi VM.  That's not available in Workstation 7 but you can do it with Workstation 8 - http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8970?tstart=60.

Techstarts
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This problem is specific to ESXi 5.0?

I have done similiar thing on my laptop on ESXi4.0 and it runs well.

Techstarts

VMware VCP4

http://vcp5.wordpress.com/

With Great Regards,
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Dave_Mishchenko
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If you're wanting to run nested 64 bit guests then the base hypervisor has to ESXi 5 / Workstation 8 or Fusion 4.  For 32 bit nested guests that is not the case.

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Not sure if I'm running nested or not. Please confirm

Hardware -Dell XPS running iCore7

OS: Windows 7.0 x64 bit Home

Workstation: 7.0

Guest OS: ESXi4.x, Windows 20082 (x64)

Is this not example of nested VM?

Thanks,

Techstarts

With Great Regards,
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Dave_Mishchenko
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With a nested guest you would have 3 layers -

1) Host hypervisor - in your case Workstation 7

2) ESXi VM running on Workstations

3) Then the nested VM would be created by connecting to ESXi and creating a VM on ESXi.

The primary advantage to nested VMs is that you can create a complex ESXi (or now other hypervisor) test system with just a single host.  On the physical host you can create multiple ESXi VMs, one for vCenter (if you don't run it on the host), and one of share storage (again if you don't do this on the host itself).  Then you can create a nested VM running on your ESXi VMs and test out options like HA and vMotion.  It's a great way to learn vSphere with investing in a number of physical machines.

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Thank you Dave.

I agree it Is the best way to learn vSphere.

However my 8 GB laptop struggles when I try nested 32 bit VM’s ☹

With Great Regards,
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suhag79
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Good discussion,

No it is not specific to ESXi5, Even when i tried with ESXi4.1, i faced the same problem.

So for a moment, it seems that i have to up-grade my Vmware workstation to version 8.

Let me get Vmware workstation 8 and then will revert back with the result.

Thanks to all of you.

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suhag79
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Thanks,

After up-grading vmware workstation to version 8, problem got resolved.

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wjk940
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I still have the problem with Fusion 4.0.2 on Mac OS X 10.6.8. The hardware is an iMac with a Core i7-2600.

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admin
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Virtualized hardware-assisted virtualization is not officially supported under Fusion.  However, you can enable it for hardware version 8 VMs by adding the following to your ESX VM's configuration file:

vhv.enable = TRUE

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wjk940
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In 'VMware ESXi 5.vmx', I added the line 'vhv.enable = "TRUE"'

After restarting ESXi, I get the same "longmode, run as 32-bit" error.

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admin
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Please post your vmware.log file.

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wjk940
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thank you

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admin
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It looks like your virtual machine hasn't been powered off since making this configuration file change.  Fusion prefers to suspend a virtual machine rather than powering it off.  You'll have to force a power off for this change to become effective.  Please see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006215.  I hope that KB article is still relevant for Fusion 4.

Alternatively, you should be able to shut down ESX and then power it on again.  (Note that a reboot is insufficient.  ESX must be shut down and powered back on for the changes to take effect.)

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wjk940
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I had done a Restart. The Shutdown/Start pair did the trick.

Thank you

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