Installing x86_64 RHEL4 Guest OS on Intel Xeon based ESX Host

[lspsn]

Hello

We are looking into setting up a VMware environment with ESX server for few of our servers. All our physical servers are AMD Opteron based and are being installed vua a customized install (no customization in kernel though) via kickstart Install. The virtual hosts would be providing services like NIS, print, ntp, etc to other physical servers, workstations etc.

We were looking into Intel's Quad Core Xeon based ESX hosts and then use same standard kickstart install (x86_64 Kernel RHEL4U5) for building Guest OSes.

Questions I have:

1) Would there be any issues in installing on Intel platform - I know x86_64 supports both amd64 and EM64T processors but what would be processor seen from virtual machine?

2) Fact that the servers we are thinking to setup would interact with our physical machines would the difference in processors architecture on virtual machine hosts and physical machines would it cause any problens in compatibility, running etc (i.e. ESX host, virtual machines are Intel based and all our physical machines would be AMD based)

Any feedback hightly appreciated

Thanks a lot

[TomHowarth]

you should have no issues installing this environment, just make sure that your Intel Hosts have the VT extensions enabled because without this you will not be able to install any 64bit guests on the Host.

Interaction between physical and virtual machine will be no issue either. it is just a matter of networking

"Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid." - David Hackworth

Kind Regards

Tom,

[lspsn]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for reply and tip

Regards,

[mcowger]

1) Your VM will see mostly the same processor as what you really have

2) Probably wouldn't be an issue unless your app has some strange requirements.

We do exactly this all day long, back and forth beteen virtual and physical machines. We even continue to use our PXE boot env/scripts for VMs.