Dual Boot ESX and MS Windows 2008

[Nitemare]

Is there a way I can dual boot ESX and MS Windows 2008?

I have two new physical servers in my home lab (ie my personal expense), each with 250GB hard drives. I would like to test ESX on both machines, and then reboot them to do same test with MS Windows 2008. I am hoping to compare/contrast them through a series of tests. I do have a iSCSI array so I intend to aim for Enterprise features/capabilities. I know I can dual boot a Linux/Windows box using GRUB, will ESX allow me to do the same.

To answer the obvious question, my mgmt wants to use both ESX and MS 2008 so I need to get a sense of where each can be used (I am sure everyone can understand corporate politics & directives).

Being the servers are being leased on my own dime, buying another sets of systems would run me afoul of house budget dictator, ie wife. Brining up MS 2008 in ESX would defeat the purpose of the tests.

Any suggestions??

[Nitemare]

Sorry, meant to write that I had TWO 250GB hard drives in each server, with the idea of dedicating each one to each O/S after allowing for a boot loader.

[kjb007]

If you have a supported controller for ESX, then you can make it work. However, the simplest way is to go into fdisk, and allocate each disk solely to one OS. Then, change the active drive in fdisk, or physically to allow the OS you want to boot to see the drive as its own and boot off of it.

As I stated though, this is all assuming your hardware that you want to install on is supported. What you can do is load VMware Workstation 6.x, and load ESX as a vm inside of it. There are threads on this, and a white paper how-to on xtravirt.com.

Good luck,

-KjB

[markrez]

I have dual booted many systems in my day and it is always easier to install windows first (you may already know this.) But yes, you can dual boot ESX and Windows (of course it is unsupported.)

The best way to accomplish this is to install Windows first and then ESX. Once Windows is installed, boot to the ESX CD, chose custom partitioning, and leave the Windows partition alone.

[kjb007]

Because of new boot load routine, windows 2008 will not play nicely this way. Feel free to try it, of course, and post your results. There are other threads on this forum asking the same question. The easiest steps are as I described earlier.

Again, make sure ESX recognizes your disk first, or else all of this is moot.

-KjB

[RussH]

Hi - I was thinking about doing something similar on one of my test boxes so I can test hyper-v.

Did you ever get this working? if so, did you have to follow any particular steps?

thanks!