ESX on a Mac Pro?

[InflatableMouse]

Hi,

I was wondering if ESX version 3 (or 3i?) would run on a Mac Pro?

This would be ideal since I have a Mac Pro with 2 dual core xeons at 2,66Ghz and 8GB of memory. The box has 4 320GB SATA drives and dual gigabit NIC's. But I think the problem might be the Mac's EFI instead of a regular BIOS?

This would purely be experimental and I won't be needing official support. If it runs even with a few hacks it's good for me so I train for my exams.

TIA.

[virtualdud3]

It is possible using VMware Fusion -

http://vmprofessional.com/index.php?content=fusion-esx

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[InflatableMouse]

Thx, I may resort to that if everything else fails but if it is possible, I'd like to run it natively.

[virtualdud3]

Running ESX natively on a Mac Pro? I don't think that is going to happen (the SATA drives alone are a deal-breaker with ESX 3.0.2).

Run it within a VM; this will be even better for preparing for your exam.

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[InflatableMouse]

ESX 3.x is known to work (unsupported) with certain SATA controllers and 3i officially supports it to my knowlegde.

I have 3i running in Fusion but just booting it takes such a long time I forget what I wanted to do with it in the first place.

I mentioned exam, but that's not all. I'm senior system engineer responsible for several Citrix farms. I am looking into virtualizing some of those (license server and datacollectors has been the first step). We have several ESX servers at the office so I can work there but since I'm a geek with no social life I figured I'll work at home when there are not enough hours in a working day at the office

[romman]

You cannot run ESX directly on a Mac Pro, I've tried it and it does not work. I barely got past the setup screen before I received a kernel panic. However, I have gotten it to work with VMWare Fusion but prefer to use it with Workstation 6 (under bootcamp) because bridged networking is still broke with Fusion.

[InflatableMouse]

Romman,

Which version of ESX did you try?

Did you try and find out what it paniced on?

[virtualdud3]

I am aware that you can kludge an install with certain SATA controllers; that doesn't mean it will work on a MacBook Pro.

I understand your point of wanting to run additional test servers (Citrix) on a test environment; I don't see the logic of dedicating a MacBook Pro to a home ESX server when for a LOT less money you can buy either a used server or build a whitebox ESX server with SATA drives. To each their own.

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[InflatableMouse]

It's not a macbook pro, it's a Mac Pro. More than a subtle difference

The thing is I have the Mac Pro, it's my primary workstation. I don't mean to run ESX permanently but only for a trial period. In the mean time I can work on my Powerbook G4.

I've tried second hand servers or pc's in the past, they cost a lotta money and make way too much noise and take up too much space. It's just not convenient for such a short period. Going by the specs of my Mac Pro it would be the ideal candidate in my house to run ESX for a few weeks for what I plan to do with it.

Like I've said, I tried ESX on Fusion and it's too slow to work with in a convenient way but maybe I'm doing something wrong because I hear different stories from others. If nothing else works I may have to dig into it.

I understand ESX 3 doesn't work but I'm hoping 3i might. If anyone could shed some light on it before I rearrange the layout of 1,5 TB of data I'd appreciate it.

[dominic7]

I can definitively say that you won't get ESX 3.0.x to work on the Mac Pro as there is no support in ESX 3.0.x for SATA drives. There is a remote possibility that ESX 3i will work on your hardware but I personally wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to crowbar it in.

What you might try:

Use bootcamp to create a 1GiB partition then use dd to copy a v3i image to the 1 GiB partition and see if you can boot from it. I'm not sure what chipsets the rest of the equipment in the Mac Pro is running on, but that should at least get you past some of the EFI problems I suspect you'd run in to.

[romman]

I had actually tried it with the version 3.0 disk that came with my class materials. I have downloaded the latest version and was going to try again. I have been using it somewhat with Workstation 6 (via Vista and boot camp) for my studies so I did not have a pressing need to re-try it but I would like to investigate it further.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

How long does it take to boot ESX on Fusion? Given your specs it should be under a few minutes. If it takes way longer then you may not have enbaled Intel VT in the BIOS which makes a huge difference.

[romman]

My ESX server only takes a few minutes to boot with Fusion or Worksation 6. I can have my entire lab (including my VI Server) up in less than 5 minutes. I did not specifically enable Intel VT on my Mac Pro it may have been turned on by default.

[virtualdud3]

Yeah, I saw you were using a Mac Pro; I type "MacBook" so often that when I type "Mac" my "internal auto complete" takes care of the "Book" automatically

You are correct that, given the right SATA controller/driver combination, you might be able to shoehorn an ESX installation but I haven't heard of this being done on a Mac Pro (man, I almost typed "MacBook" again). Do whatever you like; I still think you are better off running as a VM. As others stated, make sure that you enabled VT on the host machine.

If you do get ESX to install properly on the Mac Pro, make sure to post the process for doing so here; I'd love to see how you got it to work.

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[team-ip-service]

😄

I was also reading Mac Book Pro all the time.

[romman]

I agree with you virtualdud3, even if I get my Mac Pro to work with ESX 3.x I still need to use it as my primary machine so working with it in a VM is the best of both worlds for me!

[InflatableMouse]

I waited for 20 minutes maybe longer and it came to enabling or configuring interrupts.

There is no way to enable or disable VT in the BIOS because Mac's don't have a BIOS. EFI is not configurable in such a way.

I might have to try that shell script floating around that supposedly changes something in Fusion or your Vm config with regard to VT. Not sure what it does but I guess I'm going to find out.

[virtualdud3 · Accepted solution]

I haven't tried this, so I can't verify if it works:

http://forums.parallels.com/thread3273.html

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[InflatableMouse]

Thx.

I have the latest EFI version 1.1 for the Mac Pro. It shouldn't have issues with VT from what I've read.

There's a tool for Windows to check; I'll boot into bootcamp one of these days and run it to make sure.

[tbirrer]

Hi there.

Just wanted you to know that the latest version of ESX 3i (3.5.0 update 3) installs just fine on my 2008 Mac Pro.

No special hacking required, just installed it from CD like on any other server.

The install and boot process is a bit slow. It hangs up to a minute in the light grey screen, before ESX acually boots.

Otherwise it just works fine.

Cheers

Toni