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How to Configure Nested ESXi 5 to Support EVC Clusters

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Dave Hill recently wrote an article about running nested ESXi and a gotcha with EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility). In vSphere 4.x, you could not join a nested ESXi host into a cluster with EVC enabled. With vSphere 5, there's actually a way to connect a nested ESXi 5 host to an EVC enabled cluster AND still power on 64bit nested guestOSes.

I have to thank my friend and partner in crime Tuan Duong for showing me this trick awhile back. Tuan was performing some tests using both nested and physical ESXi 5 hosts and discovered this method after a bit of tinkering. At the time, I was not sure if others would find this useful and I did not document the process.

Disclaimer: As usual, this is not officially supported by VMware, use at your own risk. 

Here are the steps:

1. You must be running vSphere 5, create a nested ESXi 5 host using this article How to Enable Support for Nested 64bit & Hyper-V VMs in vSphere 5

2. Create an EVC enabled cluster or use an existing cluster with whatever baseline you would like and click on the "Current CPUID Details" in cluster settings.

3. Copy down the CPU mask flags for that particular EVC baseline, you will need this in the next step

4. Shutdown your nested ESXi 5 host and edit the VM's settings and under "Options" tab click on "CPUID Mask->Advanced". You will take the CPU mask from the above step and update the nested ESXi 5 VM to make it match

5. Go ahead and power on your nested ESXi 5 host and join it to the EVC enabled cluster you created earlier. You should not see any errors when connecting to the cluster and after that you can create a nested 64bit VM within that virtualized ESXi 5 host.

There you have it, running a nested ESXi 5 host and joined to an EVC enabled cluster! Isn't VMware technology awesome! 🙂

How to Run Windows 8 on vSphere 5 (for reals)

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Awhile back I wrote an article about running Windows 8 on vSphere 5, but the trick did not work. There was an issue during the installation that caused a system panic in the OS and prevented Windows 8 to be installed. VMware did not officially support Windows 8 as a guestOS in vSphere 5 as Windows 8 itself was not released, only a developer preview was available.

It looks like VMware has been hard at work to get support for Windows 8 running on the vSphere 5 platform and I recently got a tidbit that the issue was resolved in a recent ESXi 5 patch. Make sure you keep this on the DL .... they maybe watching 🙂

Disclaimer: VMware still does not officially support Windows 8 on vSphere, this is mainly for educational and testing purposes. Do not use this in a production environment

Here are the five easy steps to run Windows 8 on ESXi 5

  1. Download and install ESXi500-201112001 (patch02) from VMware patch repository.
  2. Create either a Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 regular VM (must be either of these guests)
  3. Edit your VM and under "Hardware->Video Card" enable 3D graphics support (this is required if you plan on running VMware Tools). You will also need to use e1000 network driver, VMXNET3 does not work
  4. Install Windows 8 using ISO
  5. Sit back and wait for the installation to complete. 

Here are a few screenshots of Windows 8 running on ESXi 5

So there you have it, you can now run the developer preview of Windows 8 on vSphere 5!

FYI - VMware does have a KB article regarding Windows 8 on vSphere which I hear will be updated very shortly. Be sure to follow it for the full details when it is updated.

UPDATE: 

If you decide to install VMware Tools (which you should always), after a reboot, you may notice the system just sitting on the splash screen and not allowing you to login. The fix is to enable 3D graphics support. Power down your Windows 8 VM and edit the settings under Hardware->Video Graphics and check the 3D box and then power back on your VM.

Using a VNC Client to Connect to VMs in ESXi 5

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The ability to connect to a virtual machine using a VNC client has been available since the early days of VMware GSX as described by this VMware KB article. The required .vmx configuration can also be applied to virtual machines running on ESX(i), but is not officially supported by VMware. With ESXi 5, this continues to work but there is one additional caveat users should to be aware of, which is the new firewall that has been introduced in ESXi 5.

In addition to the three .vmx configurations:

  • RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = [true|false]
  • RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = [port #]
  • RemoteDisplay.vnc.password = [optional]

Users need to also enable the ports selected for each virtual machine on the ESXi firewall. Here is an example of a firewall rule that needs to be created:

Take a look at this blog post for details on configuring custom firewall rules including persisting the custom rules upon a system reboot.

Here are a few screenshots of configuring the .vmx configurations and using a VNC client to connect to the powered on virtual machine.

Only the first two .vmx configurations are required, if you do not set a password, anyone can connect to the virtual machine as long as they know the hostname/IP Address of your ESX(i) host and port.

To connect to a specific virtual machine, you will specify the hostname/IP Address of the ESX(i) host and port for the given virtual machine. If you set a password, you will need to also provide that before you can connect.

Please be aware of the limitations and security concerns of using VNC. VMware Remote Console or standard RDP/SSH should still be considered for virtual machine remote access.