Hard drive preparation for ESX 3.5 install

[Danfall]

I downlaoded a trial version of ESX 3.5, burned a cd with the ISO file and tried to install it on my intel workstation. The install says it can't find a partition.

I understand ESX 3.5 runs under Red Hat linux . Do I need to install Red Hat Linux first? What does VMWare recommend? I have fedora 9

Basically could someone state the steps needed to prepare the hard drive for the install?

My workstation is configured as follows:

1.8 G P4 with 1.5 Gig Ram and 200 gig IDE hard drive. Can I install it on this system or do I need dual CPU's, >2 Gig Ram and a non ide hard drive?

Can i migrate hosts between ESXi and ESX 3.5?

Thanks,

Dan

[bvi1998]

Hi Dan:

ESX 3.5 is an operating system - base on Red Hat Enterprise Linux - so you do not need to install another operating system beforehand. Hardware compatibility is fairly restricted with ESX. Check the compatibility guide to see if your workstation is certified: . There is also a list of hardware tested by the vmware community that people have found to work as well: http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/general/cshwsw . Check out this link as well: . Minimum requirements for ESX 3.5 are one 2.0 Ghz or higher cpu and 2 GB ram. I am not sure about migrating between ESX 3i & 3.5. Hope this helps get you started in the right direction.

-Gary

[Danfall]

Could someone explain how linux gets on the hard drive when ESX 3.5 is installed . The documentation says that 3 and sometimes preferably4 partitions need to be created. How does this happen?

[weinstein5]

Just to correct one thing - ESX has its own operating system written form the ground up by VMware called the VMKernel - it is NOT based on Red Hat even though it does use some ancillary code such as the Grub Boot loader but the VMKernel is written by VMware so it is up to VMware to identify what hardware is supported by ESX - so if you have supported hardware in your server the ESX installer will recognize the supported hardware and load the necessary drivers - once this is done the installer will be able to recognize storage and will you to install the software - also VMware's recommends at least 6 partitions for installing ESX - which will be created if you select the recommended partition table during the install -

To see what hardware is officially supported check out the HCL's - for servers, for i/o adapters and storage and SAN - for hardware that works but is not on the supported list check out

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[Texiwill · Accepted solution]

Hello,

The ESX installer install 2 things basically. First it installs the vmkernel and its ancillary items and the second thing it installs is the RHEL3 based GNU/Linux management appliance or service console. COnsider them to be separate items and it will make more sense. ESX is NOT Linux. The kernel running on the hardware is the vmkernel. The vmkernel creates a VM for the GNU/Linux management appliance to run within during the boot phase of ESX. The vmkernel is a proprietary hypervisor. Also to be able to be called Linux the kernel must be blessed by Linus Torvaldis.... If you really want the gory details on how ESX boots please refer to the book VMware ESX Server in the Enterprise as it contains this information.

If you can not boot ESX then you most likely do not have a supported RAID/SCSI/SATA/SAS controller in use. This controller must be on the HCLs already pointed out in previous posts.

Note that IDE is not supported in any way.Very few SATA controllers are supported. So if your 'Workstation' only uses IDE or an unsupported RAID/SCSI/SATA/SAS controller then your options for virtualization are limited to using VMware Server, WOrkstation, or ESX within VMware Workstation.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

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[Danfall]

Thanks for the insight. I think now all I need to do is get my harware up to par and the installation should be able to proceed.

Dan