ESXi on VMWare Workstation with Widows 2008 guest

[paul1923]

Hi,

I'm just about to start a new rollout and I've been testing some things before I fork out the cash for the new gear and software.

I've tested Windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit on VMWare Workstation and all is good. My VMWare Workstation is on Win 7 64 bit

Ultimately, all this gear is going to be running on ESX, through vSphere Essentials. To test that, I installed ESXi 4 update 1 inside VMWare Workstation.

Because the vSphere client is not supported on Win 7, I installed the vSphere Client on Win XP 32 bit inside another VMWare Workstation guest.

When installing Windows 2008 R2 64 bit on ESXi, via vSphere on XP, I'm getting the following error

Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this CPU in not compatible with 64-bit mode.

Well, I know that my cpu is 64 bit capable, because I'm already running so many 64 bit things already.

It's concerned me a little, because I didn't expect this obstacle - my testing was to validate a number of other things, not this, and I'm thinking now that I might switch to Hyper-V.

I have searched the forums already, and from what I have found, nothing has solved the problem yet

However, there could be one saving grace - could the fact that I am running esxi inside vmware workstation be causing this problem ?

Paul

[continuum · Accepted solution]

You are out of luck.

You can't run 64bit guests inside a virtual ESX.

The nested VMs do not have VT-support which you would need to run a 64bit guest




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[paul1923]

Thank you.

Well, the good thing there is that I don't need to revise my whole setup - yet

The bad thing is that the pre-installation testing is going to be a little harder.

Surely this sort of thing is going to be in more and more demand.

Paul