ESXi on a Dell Optiplex 740

[dbutch1976]

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently running ESX vSphere on a Dell Optiplex 740 in my home lab and I'm very happy with the results, however I would like to be able to dual boot without adding a 2nd hard drive. I think that vSphere ESXi woudl be ideal for this purpose. What I would like to do is load vSphere onto a USB stick and then set BIOS to use the USB stick as it's first boot device. I could have that local hard disk loaded with Windows 7 and that way I could boot Windows 7 whenever the USB stick is removed. I understand that I will need to load the vSphere image onto the usb stick but I have no idea how to do this. Are there images already that would suit this purpose? Can i use any USB stick?

Thanks.

[DSTAVERT]

USB install is directly supported from the ESXi install disk. Insert the stick and start the install. If you have important data on the hard drive I would temporarily disconnect the hard drive until you are installed.

[dbutch1976]

Hi Everyone,

I stated installing and got an error:

Fatal: out of memory reading sys.vgz

This was resolved after down-levelling the BIOS as described here:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1571238

Now that the setup program is running without an issue I have a question as to where I should load the OS. My understanding is that I have a choice between a USB stick or an SD card.

Will an SD card work with a simple external USB SD card reader like I would use for my camera or do I need a specific kind of device?

Can I use any USB memory stick? Does it need to be USB 2.0 or anything like that?

Thanks.

[DSTAVERT]

You need to use a USB stick. Readers are not supported. Bad idea anyway. Any good quality branded USB 2.0 stick should work (SANDISK, Verbatum etc) at least 1GB in size. You won't benefit from a larger disk.

[dbutch1976]

Thanks for the help everyone, I'm please to report I am now able to dual boot between Windows 7 and ESXi simply by inserting/removing the USB stick and rebooting! This means I've got a home ESXi lab without having to sacrifice one of my gaming machines.

Thanks.

[dbutch1976]

Hi guys,

I have an update on my home lab. The lab presently consists of:

1 Dell Optiplex 740 small form factor (Presently being used as my iSCSI storage location)

2 identical Dell 740 Mini-towers spec'd as follows:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+

8 gigs of ram

BIOS ver 1.1.8 - I have set the BIOS settings to allow for Virtualization Technology as desribed here: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/p/19276611/19753093.aspx#19753093

I've done the following:

Installed ESXi vSphere on both hosts.

Created a 2008 Server (64 bit) Domain Controller VM

Configured the DC for DNS

Create host records for my two ESX hosts

Created a Windows 2008 (64-bit) VM to server as my virtual Centre.

Logged into one of the ESXi hosts and booted the virtual center machine.

Logged into the Virtual center and created a cluster.

Added my two hosts to the cluster.

Configured DRS and HA using defaults.

I am getting the following error when attempting to migrate between the hosts:

1. The operation is not allowed in the current connection state of the host.

2. Host CPU is incompatible with the virtual machine's requirements at CPUID level 0x80000001 register 'ecx'.

Host bits: 0000:0000:0000:0001:0000:1001

If possible, use a cluster with Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) enabled; see KB article 1003212. In the absence of EVC, see KB article 1993.

Neither of the hosts are in maintenance mode. Any ideas?

[dbutch1976]

Configuring the CPU maske fixed my issue.

[ScottBentley]

The other thing you may need to be mindful of, is where you are intending on having your VMFS datastore for the actual VM's

Obviously if you have Windows 7 on the only hard disk, you will need some method of partitioning it so that the ESXi doesnt accidently delete the OS to use as a VMFS datastore. I am not sure if this is possible as I have never tried it.

Scott

[dbutch1976]

I'm using iSCSI hosted one another server for storage, so local storage is not necessary.