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

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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 ???

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ESX Server 1.0 - Trip down memory lane

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I recently had a bit of VMware Nostalgia and for the past several weeks, I have been working on a personal skunk works project in trying to locate all major ESX and ESXi releases over the past 22 years including ESX Server 1.0 which was released by VMware back in 2001!

To my surprise, finding a digital copy of ESX pre-2.0 (1.0 & 1.5) was much harder than I had expected. Back in those early days, software was not commonly distributed over the internet like it is today, instead it was sent to vendors to create physical CD/DVD discs, which was then shipped to customers and partners. I had also reached out to many tenured folks at VMware who were still around from the early days, but each response lead to another set of folks and it typically either went in a circle or to a dead end. This was turning into an archeological hunt.

I decided to give it one more shot and I pinged John Arrasjid aka VCDX #1 and after a bit of searching, John actually found a pristine copy of ESX Server 1.0, still sealed in the box! Given how difficult it was to locate a 1.0 copy of ESX, we thought it was worth opening up and to preserve this VMware history by creating a digital ISO image, so that I could then share the experience of installing ESX 1.0 with the broader VMware community.

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How to enable passthrough for USB Network Adapters claimed by ESXi CDCE Driver?

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As part of vSphere 7.0, ESXi now ships with a USB CDCE (Communication Device Class Ethernet) driver which can benefit customers with SB network adapters that support the CDCE specification as shared in this blog post HERE. This can especially be useful for those running a VMware Homelab where the onboard network adapter may not be supported and using a CDCE USB network adapter would allow you to install ESXi.

When a CDCE-supported USB network adapter is connected to an ESXi host, it will automatically be claimed by the CDCE driver as shown in the screenshot below.


If you are planning to use the USB network adapter for VMkernel traffic, then there is no workflow change like any other physical network adapter. However, if you intend to passthrough the USB network adapter to a VM, then you may find that it is not working as expected.


The reason for this is that ESXi has already claimed the USB device, assuming you wish to use it for VMkernel traffic. To change the behavior for a particular CDCE-supported USB network adapter, we just need to apply a USB Quirk which tells ESXi to ignore this adapter.

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