manual dual boot ESXi and Windows

[WillL]

Hi,

With two hard drives, manually select boot sequence in BIOS, can ESXi and Windows 7 be installed on seperate hard drives and "coexist" in the same system without conflict? Which one should be installed first?

Thanks,

William

[idle-jam]

what i will do plug in only one disk windows installation. unplug, plug in another one disk for ESXi installation. so in the bios you will see disk 1 and disk 2 just select accordingly which OS you will want to boot. btw any reason of keep windows server? why not virtualized it?

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[FranckRookie]

Hi William,

If your machine can boot on USB devices, you can also install ESXi on a USB stick and plug it in when you want to boot your hypervisor.

Good luck.

Regards

Franck

[WillL]

This is exactly what I was thinking. Need Windows for web surfing, gaming etc, running Windows as VM on ESXi, you still need another Windows to access the VM, right?

[golddiggie]

Easiest way to think about it is ESX/ESXi hosts are 'headless'... You need another computer to administrate/access the VM's running on the host. Doesn't matter what OS is on the VM's, you'll need a system running Windows in order to access them.

Just as I have my ESXi 4.1 host here in my home lab, but I access the VM's (and everything about the virtual environment) from another computer via the vSphere Client software/tool. Without that other system you won't be able to install any operating systems into VM's on the host, or do much of anything. You'll have either a simple CLI interface on the host, or the three color screen of ESXi (the default item you get before you enable the local SSH option)...

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[golddiggie]

On top of the boot from USB flash drive option mentioned by Franck I would ask if you have a SAN/NAS that can have LUN's presented for use by ESX/ESXi... If you do, then just boot from the USB flash drive when you're going to run ESXi and be done with it. If no SAN/NAS option, then you'll want to install to the flash drive (disconnect the Windows formatted drive before this), have the other drive connected though, and format the hard drive for use as the VM's datastore.

DO remember that you'll still need another computer to do anything with the VM's on this box... You need to connect to it with the vSphere Client application in order to administrate the host (fully, other than via CLI) and use the VM's you set up on it...

What were you planning on doing with the split personality box??

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[WillL]

Windows for casual stuff, and ESXi for serious stuff, yes they are split personality :smileygrin:

[golddiggie]

Well, since you'll still need another system in the mix, in order to access the serious stuff, why not just get/build/obtain hardware to run ESX/ESXi on directly/only? Otherwise, if you only need to run 32bit OS's, run a nested ESXi host within VMware Workstation 7.x on your system...

But, if you're looking to be really serious, you'll want full capabilities, thus getting a system setup to run ESX/ESXi 24x7...

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[WillL]

I was able to run 64bit OS in Workstation 7 if I remember correctly. Do you mean only 32bit OS in the nested ESXi?

I found nested ESXi was just inefficient, plus base OS and Workstation took away too much memory. That's why I'm looking for bare metal install for serious stuff.

[golddiggie]

I was able to run 64bit OS in Workstation 7 if I remember correctly. Do you mean only 32bit OS in the nested ESXi?

I found nested ESXi was just inefficient, plus base OS and Workstation took away too much memory. That's why I'm looking for bare metal install for serious stuff.

Workstation can run 64 bit OS's because it has direct access to the physical hardware. Adding another virtualization layer to that, with installing the ESXi host as a VM, stops the transmission of that information to any VM's you create on the nested host...

If you're looking to do this with most efficiency, you'll get dedicated (and properly configured) hardware to run ESX/ESXi 24x7... ESX/ESXi are designed to run 24x7 with hundreds of days between reboots, not hours. Plus, you'll need a second system to manage the host and it's VM's, so you'll need another system anyway.

I'm using a Dell Precision Workstation T7400 as my ESXi 4.1 host... 16GB RAM, dual E5405 Xeon's, two (mirrored) 146GB 15k rpm SAS drives for ESXi to live on, (recently added) NAS/SAN for the VM's to live on... I run the vSphere Client from my Precision Workstation 490 box (an older workstation, that I've upgraded to extend it's useful life span)... I could boot the 490 with an USB flash drive (in a pinch) to provide me with a second host server. At that point, I'd need to use my laptop (my third, and final system right now) to run the vSphere Client to administrate the configuration. You need more power/resources in the host system than the system you use to administrate it... You can also use the flash drive boot option either full time, or to get a second host when needed.

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[WillL]

Good stuff, I'm drooling. I just started to build my lab, try to convert older desktops and do a whitebox setup. I can use my new laptop to run vSphere client even vCenter.

[Casper42]

On the topic of hardware and why not just build a dedicated machine, I think the main issue for anyone would be Cost.

I have the following plan for a Fall 2011 build at home.

I have a work laptop and no official budget via work for a Lab Server.

I have Core2 Quad gaming machine now, and will be replacing it soon.

I will be building in late summer or Fall a Sandy Bridge (the baby Xeon model coming, not the 1155 stuff out today) or a Bulldozer based machine to replace my gaming rig.

I dont want to spend the money on a dedicated Lab Server though as most of my budget will go into the gaming rig.

But it dawned on me, I can only do 1 thing at a time.

So my plan is to load up the Gaming machine with at least 16GB of memory (only $160 based on recent DDR3 prices) and use my gaming machine for both purposes.

Since I have my laptop, I can use it to run vSphere and the View client and whatever else.

But for those who dont have a laptop, a Nettop or Netbook would be the easy way in.  You can get a mediocre model of either for under $200 and they should be fine to run Windows and the VMware clients (vSphere / View).  And if you wanted to, once your XP/Vista/7 VM was booted on the ESXi side, you can use Terminal Server Client on the Netbook/top and connect to the VM in full screen mode and the lack of horsepower is no longer a problem.

Seems to me this is a much cheaper solution than buiding and entire 2nd machine.

And for those who DO have the budget for both, going this direction allows you to put the majority of your funds into a truly ass kicking primary machine.

PS: Did anyone ever figure out if EasyBCD can be used to dual boot between different drives without using the Thumb Drive method?  I know there is a way when installing Linux to tell it to put Grub on the same partition as Linux rather than the first partition, and then use EasyBCD to add an entry to the boot loader for Linux.  Just wondering if such a trick exists for ESXi or not.  If not I guess I will have to try it when the new hardware arrives eventually.

[continuum]

why easyBCD ?

whats wrong with grub ? - you can find a menu.lst that works in my last post.

[idle-jam]

or you could install ESX on top of VMware workstation ontop of your windows server =)

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[continuum]

does not matter what you install first .

I would install ESXi first to disk 0 - then remove disk0 and use disk1.

Install Windows and grub4dos then.

With grub4dos you can then switch and swap disknumbers ...

we discussed something similar recently - see

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1574625#1574625

you will also find a boot-cd that you can use to change between ESXi and Windows ...




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[cferran]

I want to do the same thing: dual boot between ESXi and Windows 7. Why? I got a very powerful computer that I can use for ESXi and it has a powerful videocard. My other computers are far less powerful. If I install Windows 7 as a VM I would not be able to access the VM from another machine and have a two monitor configuration and leverage that videocard (or would I?). Of course if I could leverage that videocard and use a two monitor configuration from a remote machine then the VM option would be the right one.

I was thinking on creating a USB boot drive and that way if I boot with the USB flash drive I would go into ESXi and if I do not use the flash drive I would go into Windows. I have four HDs on that machine I would dedicate two for Windows and two for ESXi. One of those drives is an SSD so I would use that as the Windows boot drive. I am concerned that either Windows 7 or ESXi would try to access the drives used for the “other” system and corrupt them. How could avoid that? Any comments?

[DSTAVERT]

Why not install VMware Workstation on Windows. You can install ESXi as a virtual machine in Workstation (or Player) and install virtual machines inside that. Workstation will be able to take better advantage of the video card. http://vmware.com/go/workstation

[golddiggie]

Only limitation there is you'll only be able to create/run VM's with 32 bit operating systems.

[DSTAVERT]

If there is a need for 64bit they can run directly as a VM in Workstation

[cferran]

I am assuming that ESXi is superior to Workstation. I am assuming that having Win7 as a layer between the HW and the VMOS (Workstation) takes a considerable toll on the system. Am I incorrect in my assumption? If the only thing running on the Windows 7 machine is VMWare workstation would that system be as powerful and capable as one that is running ESXi? Of course I would have to disable all the power-saving options on Windows 7 to make sure that it does not bring the VMs down during sleep or other calm times.

[DSTAVERT]

If you need a powerful machine and need to run large scale applications in a production environment don't bother asking about dual booting. Get a dedicated machine for ESXi and a dedicated desktop machine. If you have enough processor (fast multicore) and lots of RAM (8 to 16GB is nice) you can have a very nice test / dev machine capable of running multiple OSs.

[cferran]

I built a nice white-box system (Asus Sabertooth X58, Intel Core i7-970 [6 cores] 24 GB RAM, 1 SSD HD, three 2TB HDs, Radeon HD 6870)). It gave me some headaches at the start due to the builtin NIC but I got an Intel NIC and got it to work. I was planning on using the three HDs in a RAID 5 setup but that does not seem to be feasible so now each disk is independent and I have plenty of HDs. During three month stretches I need to run several DB servers and clients in a production environment. And in between I have two months stretches when I do not need those servers and wanted to use it as my own station. Ideally I could create a VM as my own station but then I could not have dual monitors nor could I leverage the videocard (or is there a way to do that?). I am not looking to running games but I do a lot of video processing and certainly work with too many programs at the same time so the double monitor setup is a must.

[realdreams]

I don't think you can even install ESXi 5.0u1 without a 64 bit processor.

Easiest way is 2 boot devices, one for each OS. ESXi image does not take much space. Or you can try auto deploy which can be a PITA for this kind of application. Boot from SAN is also indeed a great idea if you have the environment.

[cferran]

I understand that ESXi is not only much more robust that workstation but also leverages the machine much better. When using ESXi I do need a robust and highly capable machine. I will be running several VMs with DB2 server, SQL server, and Informix server concurrently with a few clients running MS-Access. I got the funding for the machine for that purpose. There will be times when I will need to have that machine leveraging ESXi to its fullest extent. But there will be times (months) when all the VMs will be off and I can leverage the machine better as my own PC.

[anthonyu]

have you tried installing ESXi on a USB key and change the boot device when you want to boot to ESXi and Windows? just to be safe, I would unplug the Windows OS drive before hand.

if you want to build your own "white box" a good site is vm-help.com