Upgrading ESXi3.5 to ESXi4 with limited RAM

[vMadan]

Hello,

I am new to VMware and i have converted the desktop PCs into ESXi servers for learning the technology. Currently a P4 EM64T enabled desktop with 1GB of RAM is running ESXi3.5 and i am planning to upgrade it to ESXi4 after adding another 1GB. I have couple of question for the experts to clarify.

1) The 1GB RAM already present in the desktop is of DDR1 type and shown as 986 MB in bios, so if i add another 1GB the total will be close to 1800 MB and not 2GB which is the minimum RAM required for ESXi4. Am i still able to install ESXi4?

2)The processor is P4 64bit and Hyperthread enabled so will it be compatible with the ESXi4 as i dont know the difference between 64bit enabled and processor with native support for 64 bit computing. Please enlighten me.

I have already invested a lot for hardware and i want to wisely use the money on further purchasing of hardware. Please help me by clarifying the above questions.

Thanks in Advance.

[golddiggie · Accepted solution]

What is the ACTUAL Intel processor? Look on the Ultimate ESX Whitebox site (www.ultimatewhitebox.com) to see if it supports (or is supported/tested for) ESX/ESXi 4 or not...

2GB of RAM is the MINIMUM you need to install/use ESX/ESXi 4... Just having that means you might be able to run one VM, then again, you might not. A more realistic minimum RAM is 4GB, with 8GB (or more) being much better.

You'll need to enable the Virtualization Technology within the bios in order to run ANY 64 bit VM's on those systems. Otherwise, you're locked into 32bit guests only.

I would advise installing ESXi 4u1 onto an USB flash drive (at least 2GB in size) and use that to test each system to see IF you can even run ESXi 4u1 on them. You could easily run into issues with the onboard hard drive controller not being supported, or some other key item (such as the NIC) not being supported and then you're down until you can actually get more hardware that WILL run ESXi4...

I'm actually booting up a Dell PowerEdge 860 server, with 4GB of RAM, no hard drives inside, with an Intel Pentium D 915 processor (dual core, 64 bit) as a test. I installed ESXi4u1 onto the 2GB USB flash drive not that long ago and was able to run it on a few other systems. It shows the processor correctly (on the bootup screen) as well as the ESXi build number (244038) which is all correct... Just waiting for the last bit to load up before I connect to it from my main working system.

To be completely honest, just because you managed to get some desktop PC's to run ESXi 3.5 by no way guarantee's simple memory increases will allow you to run ESXi 4... There's many parts of a system that need to be compatible/correct before you'll be able to use the product. You would be best off getting systems that have components listed on the VMware HCL so that you don't need to worry... I'm talking about fully supported processors, drive (hardware RAID) controllers, memory amounts (go beyond the bare-bone minimum) and even the hard drives themselves.

Since starting this message, the PE860 server has fully booted into ESXi 4 and is working. I did need to assign a NIC to the management network, before it could ping and such, but once that was done, it's fully up and running... The beauty of using the USB flash drive for testing is that you don't need to jump through tons of hoops to get ESXi 4u1 installed. You just need to be able to boot from USB (on the system you're looking to use/test) and then do so. I'm giving serious thoughts to using this method for the next host system/server I pick up that will go into my home lab (as a perm resident)... I'll probably end up making a few duplicate flash drives, just in case one goes bad on me...

VMware VCP4

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