Thanks goodness for Virtualization and the ability to easily install ANY operating system inside of a vSphere Virtual Machine including the very first release of ESX 1.0, which is more than 22 years old now.
While going through the process of installing each of the major VMware ESX and ESXi releases, I had made notes for each of the VM configurations that I had used and any other issues I may have ran into. Figured I share this information in case anyone might be interested and this would also provide an online searchable reference in case I ever need to do this again for my future-self 😀
In addition to recording each installation, which you can watch via the Youtube playlists below, I also had some fun putting together this short compilation that summarizes all the VMware ESX and ESXi releases over the past 22 years. Definitely recommend checking it out and be sure to 👍🔊😉
- Youtube Playlist for all VMware ESX Install
- ESX 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.1, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, & 4.1
- Youtube Playlist for all VMware ESXi Installs
- ESXi 3.5, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, 6.0, 6.5, 6.7, 7.0 & 8.0
Note: ESXi 8.0b was the version running on top of the physical hardware (Supermicro E200-8D and was used to deploy all VM configurations below using vCenter Server 8.0b.
ESX 1.x to 2.x
- VM Compatibility: ESX/ESXi 3.5 and later (vHW4)
- GuestOS: Other/Linux (32-bit)
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: Flexible
- Storage Adapter: Bus Logic
ESX & ESXi 3.x
- VM Compatibility: ESX/ESXi 4.0 and later (vHW7)
- GuestOS: Other/Linux (32-bit)
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: E1000
- Storage Adapter: Lsi Logic
- VM Advanced Setting: cpuid.cacheLevel = 2 (see this blog post HERE for details)
ESX & ESXi 4.x
- VM Compatibility: ESX/ESXi 4.0 and later (vHW7)
- GuestOS: VMware ESX 4.x
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: E1000
- Storage Adapter: Lsi Logic
ESXi 5.0
- VM Compatibility: ESXi 5.0 and later (vHW8)
- GuestOS: VMware ESXi 5.x
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: E1000
- Storage Adapter: Lsi Logic
ESXi 5.1
- VM Compatibility: ESXi 5.1 and later (vHW9)
- GuestOS: VMware ESXi 5.x
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: E1000
- Storage Adapter: Lsi Logic
ESXi 5.5
- VM Compatibility: ESXi 5.5 and later (vHW10)
- GuestOS: VMware ESXi 5.x
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: E1000
- Storage Adapter: Lsi Logic
ESXi 6.0
- VM Compatibility: ESXi 6.0 and later (vHW11)
- GuestOS: VMware ESXi 6.0
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: E1000
- Storage Adapter: Lsi Logic
ESXi 6.5
- VM Compatibility: ESXi 6.5 and later (vHW13)
- GuestOS: VMware ESXi 6.5 and later
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: VMXNET3
- Storage Adapter: VMware Paravirtual
ESXi 6.7
- VM Compatibility: ESXi 6.7 and later. (vHW14)
- GuestOS: VMware ESXi 6.7and later
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: VMXNET3
- Storage Adapter: VMware Paravirtual
ESXi 7.x
- VM Compatibility: ESXi 7.0 and later (vHW17)
- GuestOS: VMware ESXi 7.x
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: VMXNET3
- Storage Adapter: VMware Paravirtual
ESXi 8.x
- VM Compatibility: ESXi 8.0. and later (vHW20)
- GuestOS: VMware ESXi 8.0 and later
- vCPU: 2
- vMEM: 8GB
- vDISK: 8GB
- NIC Adapter: VMXNET3
- Storage Adapter: VMware Paravirtual
Thank you for this. However I wonder where can we find a repo to get all those ancient releases?
Are you able to upload some of the older versions to archive.org? I'd have a lot of fun going through some of them as well.
No, unless it is available through typical VMware download channels, I can not shared any of the images. As mentioned to others already, earlier releases of ESX require a license key before you can do anything useful. So you won't get too far beyond the initial installation.
We have a physical host running Esxi 8 U1 and have 4 Nested Esxi 8 U1 Vm's installed. We have HA and DRS enabled in Vsphere 8 and are using a Iscsi Initiator on each Nested Esxi VM. Have only a distributed switch and No Standard Switches installed. The iscsi connections work perfectly on each Nested Esxi VM so we have a shared storage LUN. The issue we have is that we installed a 10GB ethernet Nic on the Physical Host and it is recognized correctly on the physical host, but none of the Nested Esxi VM's see this additional Nic. We added a 2nd nic to the Nested Esxi VM's in its VM settings but it does not represent the 10GB nic. So any help would be appreciated in what we need to do to get this additional nic to be recognized by the Nested Esxi VM's. Thanks for any help in this matter.
Great Post. I have tried version 8.0u1a however I cannot run Virtual Machines. This the error I get "This host supports AMD-V, but the AMD-V implementation is incompatible with VMware ESX"
My host has a AMD Ryzen 5 5600H and I am running a Ubuntu Server with KVM as the first layer virtualization.
For starters, install ESXi as the bare-metal Hypervisor, instead of KVM and then see if you get same behavior? I suspect you won’t have issues as you’re using non-VMware Hypervisor and you should ask in their respective forums for issues
I bought Intel Nuc 13 i5 Pro after saw your reviews, I attempted deploy the Nested ESXi 8 or 7. After deploy I can't login cos didn't accept my password, is there any standard password just in case for me try?
What that v1 or v2 OVA?
Nested_ESXi8.0u2_Appliance_Template_v2.ova
Shouldn’t be any issues. Default is VMware1!, but recommend changing it to your desired password when you deploy
Worked now, thanks.