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mapuancloudengi
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Hi all, Can you please help me how to speed up the OS installation of a nested VM under a nested ESXi 5 Host? I suppose it's normal that it will be slow since it's a nested VM under a nested one? Thanks!

Hope someone can answer me. Thank you nested VM experts!

Regards, Dann Angelo De Guzman, B.S. Electronics Eng'g VCP-5 #101036 Manila, Philippines If anyone find my responses or blog posts very useful, please consider awarding points. Thanks 🙂
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Based on your other post, I suspect that ESXi does not support hardware-assisted virtualization on your processor.  Can you post the vmware.log file for your ESXi VM?

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Can you provide more details?  What product are you using to virtualize ESXi 5?  What is your hardware configuration?  What OS are you installing under ESXi 5?  How slow is it?

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mapuancloudengi
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I have a nested ESXi 5 VM under a physical ESXi 5.0 Server, I am accessing the nested ESXi 5 , of course using vSphere Client. The OS I am installing inside the nested VM under my nested ESXi 5.0 is Windows XP 32-BIT, with 1 vCPU, 256MB RAM, and 10GB Hard Disk Size. What should be the ideal specs for running a nested VM (WinXP 32-bit "inner guest") under a nested ESXi 5 instance ("outer guest"). I've been waiting for this WinXP OS installation to finish for 3 days already. It 's too long to wait. Is it normal? I believe not. Thank you for the response!

Regards, Dann Angelo De Guzman, B.S. Electronics Eng'g VCP-5 #101036 Manila, Philippines If anyone find my responses or blog posts very useful, please consider awarding points. Thanks 🙂
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a_p_
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Wow, waiting for an XP setup for 3 days, that's what I call patience Smiley Wink

Depending on your underlying hardware the nested environment may not perform as fast as the non-nested one, but in this case I rather think there's an issue with the OS installation itself than with the nested environment. The only reason I could think of is an out-of-disk space issue for the nested VM which may cause the XP installation to stall.

Can you please provide some details about your environment? Hardware (CPU, Memeory), configuration of the virtualized hosts (assigned vCPU, memory, disk space), ...

André

mapuancloudengi
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Hi, here are the specs of my environment:


For the Physical ESXi 5.0: (HP Proliant)

RAM = 64GB RAM

4 dual-core CPUs

8x146GB Hard Disk Storage

Having a total of 8 NICS


For the nested ESXi 5.0 under my physical ESXi Host:

RAM = 2GB

2 vCPUs

Hard Disk = 20 GB

4 VMNIC

Nested VM (WinXP) under my nested ESXi 5.0:

256MB RAM

1 vCPU

HD = 10GB

1 VMNIC

Thanks! Smiley Happy

Regards, Dann Angelo De Guzman, B.S. Electronics Eng'g VCP-5 #101036 Manila, Philippines If anyone find my responses or blog posts very useful, please consider awarding points. Thanks 🙂
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According to the specs you provided, I assume you have a DL508 G5 with 4 Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® E7220 Processors!?

What you may want to try, is to increase the virtual ESXi host's memory to e.g. 4GB. If this does not help, please provide (attach) the latest vmware.log files for the virtual ESXi host as well as the nested XP Client.

André

mapuancloudengi
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Thank you Andre'. My HP Proliant Server uses an AMD Opteron Processor, not Intel Xeon. Smiley Happy I will try to increase my RAM like you've adviced me. I am currently developing a vSphere Lab environment for an internal training for some people here. That's why I need to provision a total of eight virtual ESXi Hosts. For 8 students.

Regards, Dann Angelo De Guzman, B.S. Electronics Eng'g VCP-5 #101036 Manila, Philippines If anyone find my responses or blog posts very useful, please consider awarding points. Thanks 🙂
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mapuancloudengineer wrote:

Thank you Andre'. My HP Proliant Server uses an AMD Opteron Processor, not Intel Xeon. Smiley Happy

Which AMD Opteron processor?  Does ESXi support hardware assisted virtualization for this processor?  Have you configured the physical host to allow virtualized hardware assisted virtualization?  Is the nested Windows guest configured to use hardware assisted virtualization?  See javascript:; for more information.

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Based on your other post, I suspect that ESXi does not support hardware-assisted virtualization on your processor.  Can you post the vmware.log file for your ESXi VM?

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mapuancloudengi
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Hi J.Mattson,

I have posted my vmware.log files on my other thread that you have responded as well. But for assurance, I'll post it also on this thread.

I hope I can finally fix these nested VMs issue. Smiley Sad

Thanks again!

Regards, Dann Angelo De Guzman, B.S. Electronics Eng'g VCP-5 #101036 Manila, Philippines If anyone find my responses or blog posts very useful, please consider awarding points. Thanks 🙂
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