WilliamLam.com

  • About
    • About
    • Privacy
  • VMware Cloud
  • Tanzu
    • Application Modernization
    • Tanzu services
    • Tanzu Community Edition
    • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
    • vSphere with Tanzu
  • Home Lab
  • Nested Virtualization
  • Apple
You are here: Home / ESXi / How to install all versions of ESX and ESXi in VM?

How to install all versions of ESX and ESXi in VM?

04.11.2023 by William Lam // 4 Comments

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 πŸ˜€

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 πŸ‘πŸ”ŠπŸ˜‰

  • 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

More from my site

  • Executing Commands During Boot Up In ESXi 5.1
  • Adding Non-Supported ESXi Builds to VIN (vSphere Infrastructure Navigator)
  • Quick Tip - How to monitor when ESXi filesystem and partitions are filling up?
  • ESXi on ASUS PN64-E1
  • Frigate NVR with Coral TPU & iGPU passthrough using ESXi on Intel NUC

Categories // ESXi, Nested Virtualization Tags // ESX, ESXi

Comments

  1. Goncalo Risa says

    04/11/2023 at 11:46 pm

    Thank you for this. However I wonder where can we find a repo to get all those ancient releases?

    Reply
  2. Tim Hansen says

    04/12/2023 at 4:34 pm

    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.

    Reply
    • William Lam says

      04/17/2023 at 1:18 pm

      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.

      Reply
  3. Larry Dajnowski says

    05/11/2023 at 12:34 pm

    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.

    Reply

Thanks for the comment! Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Search

Author

William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC) across Private, Hybrid and Public Cloud

Connect

  • Email
  • GitHub
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo

Recent

  • Will this Arm SoC work with ESXi-Arm? 06/02/2023
  • Converting VirtualBox VDI (Virtual Disk Image) to VMDK for use with ESXi 8.x 05/31/2023
  • Quick Tip - How to monitor when ESXi filesystem and partitions are filling up? 05/30/2023
  • DDR5 SODIMM capable kits for ESXi 05/30/2023
  • ESXi on ASUS PN64-E1 05/24/2023

Advertisment

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Copyright WilliamLam.com © 2023

 

Loading Comments...