MTRRs on virtual machines, or virtual inside virtual...

[Avlis_Onurb]

Hi all.

I guess this is a lot of "wishfull thinking", but I had to try...

I have downloaded ESX 3 as trial to learn a bit and try the new stuff (vmotion, DRS, ...) and as I am not rich and this is personal, I was hopping I could run it under... VMware Server... (linux host, kernel 2.6.16, gentoo, 2G ram, athlon X2)

I already have a mini windows network, with clusters and 64bit machines running... and I was hoping to setup a vmware cluster on this too!

Setup goes fine, but on first boot, I get a message, and then a panic...:

TSC: 343411030 cpu0:0)MTRR: Read: Unsupported number of MTRRS 0

I do not know enough about processors and the magic stuff vmware does to create virtual machines but... will MTRRs ever be available on a guest?

Done some research (google, vmware docs) but I could not find much about this subject. Booting another linux guest showed me that a cat of /proc/mtrr returns nothing...

How do you guys at vmware do development and testing on this? allways on physical machines?

Or is there a "magical" kernel param I could give it for ESX get over the lack of MTRRs? I could live with fair/poor performance, just to see how it works...

Thanks in advance for your time...

[sbeaver · Accepted solution]

You can not run ESX as a VM.

[johnjore]

No virtualization software (that i know of) works inside any other virtualization software. (Emulation yes, virtualization no)

Just my 2c...

JJ

[GregBell]

VMware GSX Server works inside VM.

[johnjore]

Really? I'm suprised in a big way!

What version / product did you run on the host? And what version of GSX as a vm? and what VM's have you managed to run as eh.. vm's within the vm?

JJ

[liamclancy]

I'm sure its possible[/u]. Last year we had a VMware technician show us ESX 2.5 running inside either Workstation or GSX on his laptop (as a demo).

[johnjore]

hm... I run ESX 2.5 inside Workstation and/or GSX... but it never loads the VMKernel..... (But the SC is there and VC can connect etc..., but no VMs can start...)

Did the techy run VMs or was it only the VC the SC you where shown?

JJ

[liamclancy]

There's a bit more in this post:

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=358011&#358011

... two VMware staff admitting that there is a version of Workstation that allows it, but that it isn't on the market.

Shame. This is the first time I've ever had an issue with the way VMware do something. Normally I use them as a benchmark and wish that other vendors where half as good.

[steinweo]

Hi everybody,

Does anybody knows if it is supported now or not to run ESX inside WS or GSX? I tried it, but after installation and basic setup, it keeps looping on reboot.

Like most of you, I would find it cool to be able to run ESX inside a WS or GSX VM. I would use it for demo, education or whatever ... excpet performance benchmark for sure

Regards, Olivier.

[liamclancy]

I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but I was speaking to a collegue yesterday and he has advised that he has ESX 3 running inside Microsoft Virtual Server (as an "Other OS").

[MadMax1978]

I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but I was

speaking to a collegue yesterday and he has advised

that he has ESX 3 running inside Microsoft Virtual

Server (as an "Other OS").

Hi Could you ask your colleague how he did this?

I tried to install ESX 3.0 in MS Virtual Server 2005 R2, to test it, but at the point when esx will set up the Network configuration it says something like "no supported network card found" thanks!!!

[wattsjc]

Hi,

Just an FYI for everyone, I have ESX 3 running as a VM on a ESX 3 host. It is slow and I get the following MTRR error but it works. I did this to test test ESX 3.0.1 upgrade.

TSC: 106788732 cpu0:0)MTRR: 461 Unsupported number of MTRRS 0

0:00:00:07. 974 cpu1:1025):MTRR: 461 Unsupported number of MTRRS 0[/b]

The only issues I am having is I can't ping the gateway on my subnet from the service console but I can from other Win2k3 VMs on the same vSwitch.

Regards!

[Avlis_Onurb]

Can you post the vmx of that virtual machine?

thanks!

[liamclancy]

"I tried to install ESX 3.0 in MS Virtual Server 2005 R2, to test it, but at the point when esx will set up the Network configuration it says something like "no supported network card found"

Sorry its taken so long to get back to this.

I did finally get to speak to my collegue. Turns out that he did it with ESX 3 Beta. Apparently the beta versions support far more network drivers than the final releases. Mr Gibson's experience (quoted above) is consistent with this.

[dstauffer]

I ran an ESX 3.0.0 virtual machine on an ESX 3.0.0 server to test our ESX kickstart process. I tried it again with an ESX 3.0.1 VM running on an ESX 3.0.1 server but I'm now having problems with the SCSI module loading correctly.

[hansq]

Is there anyway to download ESX beta ? Or anyway to tweak vmx ?

I have the same trouble with ethernet cards not recognized.

Thanks a lot.

[mannyb]

I am presently using it with the most recent version of ESX3 not Beta, As mentioned before it is rather slow. I will post back any tweaks I find. For starters I will try a slower chipset, presently using a Dell 2950.

Message was edited by:

mannyb

[Ninjaboy_jr]

In retrospect to what was posted in your Virtuallization inside a virtual environment.

ESX DOES work within VMware Servers and GSX. I'm sure they have methods of testing this. I also doubt that they test all their build on every individual machine.

The VMWARE Server needs to be installed on an ESX Supported machine. Such as IBM Xseries AMD or Xeons or DELL's systems. Basically need to use any system that is considered an enterprise class system in the IT world.

It also works on a few MSI Server / Workstations systems for those that are interested in working and discovering ESX's features but are also on a tight budget.

As long as the systems are ECC and or multiprocessing. There really shouldn't be much of an issue getting ESX to work either on VMware or solely installed on the system.

This is from experience working on many systems and sneeking in some time to figure out the nicks and bumps of working on ESX.

Happy VM-ing

[pcomo]

Hi,

we could install ESX server 3.0.1 into Worstation6 VM.

Try this link:

http://www.xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=75&func=fileinfo&id=13

You need to have a machine with Intel VT CPU .

[Atamido]

I attempted to start ESX 3.0.1-32039 in a VM using VMware Server 1.0.2. It appeared to install fine. After rebooting, it got to "Initializing memory" and gave me the MTRRS error in red lettering down below. The system continued to boot, but very slowly.

At first I thought it had locked up, but it did say "Vmkernel has been loaded successfully."

It continued loading very slowly. The last few things it did was:

Mounting root...kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds

EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

ok.

100.rootfs succeeded.

Freeing unused kernel memory: 376k freed

INIT: version 2.85 booting

After this point, it fails at a pink screen of death. It continued to use 100% of it's CPU even after locking up.

http://files.commo.de/vmware_psod.png

This was on a Dell Optiplex 745 with an Intel Core 2 Duo 6300. I didn't do any other configuration other than using the "Other" type and setting 1GB of RAM.