Install ESX on top of ESX - can it be done?

[AnnTelope]

I have an ESX host which quite happily runs VMs - however ...when I try to install an ESX host as a VM

I get as far as the following .......

Mounting Local filesystems:

Savin boot logs:

Unmounting initrd:

Enabling swap space

INIT: Entering runlevel: 3

Entering non-interactive startup

Applying Intel IA32 Microcode update:

Starting vmkstart:

it then jumps to a black screen .....

If I start it in console only mode then I can log in and ping other machines and they can ping the console. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Has anyone managed to run ESX on top of ESX ?

[admin · Accepted solution]

Tom is correct. This configuration only works for AMD64 chips with AMD-V and RVI. I misstated the configuration options in my previous post. They should be:

monitor.virtual_mmu = "hardware"
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "true"

Neither "monitor_control.vt32" nor "monitor_control.enable_svm" has any effect under ESX 3.5.