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Nested Virtualization Resources

10.04.2012 by William Lam // 7 Comments

Here is a consolidated page on all the articles that I have written about the Nested Virtualizatoin (nested ESXi, Hyper-V, etc) and all the goodies that are "Not Supported".

vSphere / vCloud 5.1

  • Having Difficulties Enabling Nested ESXi in vSphere 5.1?
  • How to Enable Nested ESXi & Other Hypervisors in vSphere 5.1
  • How to Enable Nested ESXi & Other Hypervisors in vCloud Director 5.1

vSphere / vCloud 5.0

  • How to Enable Support for Nested 64bit & Hyper-V VMs in vSphere 5
  • The Missing Piece In Creating Your Own Ghetto vSEL Cloud

Additional Info/Tips/Tricks/

  • Nested ESXi 5.1 Supports VMXNET3 Network Adapter Type
  • How to Configure Nested ESXi 5 to Support EVC Clusters
  • How to Enable Nested vFT (virtual Fault Tolerance) in vSphere 5
  • How to Install VMware VSA in Nested ESXi 5 Host Using the GUI
  • Cool Undocumented Features in vCloud Director 1.5
  • The Missing Piece In Creating Your Own Ghetto vSEL Cloud
  • Nested Virtualization APIs For vSphere & vCloud Director 5.1
  • How To Enable Nested ESXi Using VXLAN In vSphere & vCloud Director 
  • Will Intel’s VMCS Shadowing Feature Benefit VMware’s Nested Virtualization?
  • How to run Nested RHEV Hypervisor on ESXi? 
  • How to quickly setup and test VMware VSAN (Virtual SAN) using Nested ESXi
  • How to run Nested ESXi on top of a VSAN datastore? 
  • VMware Tools for Nested ESXi 
  • Why is Promiscuous Mode & Forged Transmits required for Nested ESXi?
  • How to properly clone a Nested ESXi VM?

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // amd-v, ept, ESX 4.0, ESXi, ESXi 4.1, ESXi 5.0, ESXi 5.1, hyper-v, intel vt, nested, rvi, vhv, virtual hardware virtualization, vSphere, vSphere 4.0, vSphere 5.0, vSphere 5.1

Having Difficulties Enabling Nested ESXi in vSphere 5.1?

09.29.2012 by William Lam // 21 Comments

I noticed there were a few folks having some difficulties enabling Nested ESXi (VHV Virtual Hardware Virtualization) in the latest release of ESXi 5.1 and I thought I share some additional info and tips on troubleshooting your setup in case you are running into similar problems.

*** DISCLAIMER **** This is not officially supported by VMware, do not bother asking if it is supported or calling into VMware support for details or help.

If you wish to run nested ESXi or other hypervisors on ESXi 5.1 and run 32-bit nested virtual machines, you must meet the following hardware requirement:

  • CPU supporting Intel VT-x or AMD-V

If you wish to run nested 64-bit virtual machines in your nested ESXi or other hypervisors, in addition to the requirement above, you must also meet the following hardware requirement:

  • CPU supporting Intel EPT or AMD RVI

If you only meet the first criteria, you CAN still install nested ESXi or other hypervisors on ESXi 5.1, BUT you will only be able to run 32-bit nested virtual machines. When you create your virtual machine shell using the new vSphere Web Client, in the expanded CPU view, the "Hardware Virtualization" box will be grayed out. This is expected as you do not have full support for VHV, but you can still continue with your installation of ESXi or other hypervisors.

In ESXi 5.0, you may have been able to run 64-bit nested virtual machines without EPT/RVI support but performance was extremely poor. With ESXi 5.1, VHV now requires EPT/RVI.

Note: During the installation of ESXi, you may see the following message "No Hardware Virtualization Support", you can just ignore it.

If you are using sites such as Intel's ark.intel.com to check your CPU requirements, be aware that it is COMMON even for the hardware vendors to publish incorrect information about their websites. However, there is a quick way you can validate on your ESXi host whether you have full VHV support.

In vSphere 5.1, there is a new capability property called nestedHVSupported which specifies whether your physical ESXi 5.1 host has full VHV support. This property will only be true IF your CPU has both Intel-VT+EPT or AMD-V+RVI. A quick and easy way to validate this is using the vSphere MOB to retrieve the value.

To check nestedHVSupported property, please enter the following into a web browser (substitute the IP Address/hostname of your ESXi host):

https://himalaya.primp-industries.com/mob/?moid=ha-host&doPath=capability

After you login, search for the nestedHVSupported property on the page and you should see a value of either true or false. As mentioned earlier, if it is false, you might still be able to install nested ESXi or other hypervisors but you will not be able to run nested 64-bit virtual machines. I would also recommend taking a look at your system BIOS to ensure things like Intel-VT/EPT and AMD-V/RVI are enabled and sometimes it might just be as simple as a BIOS upgrade (you can always confirm by contacting the hardware vendor if you have further questions).

For proper networking connectivity, also ensure that either your standard vSwitch or Distributed Virtual Switch has both promiscuous mode and forged transmit enabled either globally on the portgroup or distributed portgroup your nested ESXi hosts are connected to.

Additional Resources: 

  • How to Enable Nested ESXi & Other Hypervisors in vSphere 5.1
  • How to Enable Nested ESXi & Other Hypervisors in vCloud Director 5.1

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // ESXi 5.1, hyper-v, nested, vcd, vcloud director 5.1, vesxi, vhv, vsel, vSphere 5.1

vInception #NotSupported Slides Posted

09.10.2012 by William Lam // 4 Comments

I was pinged by a few folks asking if my #NotSupported session that I presented at VMworld US would be available online, so here is the slide deck to my vInception presentation.

I would also like to thank everyone that attended my session! I had a lot of fun and hopefully you did too!  

UPDATE: I just realized the livestream recording videos are online, but they are not very clear. Apologies for that. I heard the better records from the vBrownbag crew should be up shortly, so once those are up, I will replace them on the site.

Part 1:

Watch live streaming video from vmwarecommunitytv at livestream.com

Part 2:

vmwarecommunitytv on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // ESXi, nested, nested ft, notsupported, vcloud director, vhv, vinception, vSphere

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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