VMware ESXI

[cmo30]

Hi guys I’m new here and I’m looking into setting up my desktop to run VMware ESXI but when I try to install it when it scans for available storage media to install the ESXI my NVME storage from teamgroup isn’t showing up for me to install I’ve got a B550 Aorus pro-p motherboard running a 5600x cpu and 16GB of ram right now. but I know I’ll need to upgrade ram for sure to run VMware ESXI I’m wanting to create a home lab with it to lean and study ESXI to gain experience and to get prepared for the VMware certified professional data center virtualization certification any help and advice on this issue would be much appreciated thanks in advance. 

[Lurick]

What version of ESXI?

Did you enable UEFI mode in the BIOS?

 

Check out this link too:

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/psa-vmware-esxi-7-0-does-not-like-consumer-nvme-drives.28954/

[cmo30]

32 minutes ago, Lurick said:

What version of ESXI?

Did you enable UEFI mode in the BIOS?

 

Check out this link too:

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/psa-vmware-esxi-7-0-does-not-like-consumer-nvme-drives.28954/

Ive created an ESXI version 7 which is the latest release and I also made sure UEFI mode was active before installation. Also what NVME SSD would I need to purchase what brand?

 

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, cmo30 said:

Ive created an ESXI version 7 which is the latest release and I also made sure UEFI mode was active before installation. Also what NVME SSD would I need to purchase what brand?

 

Maybe just use a standard SATA SSD?

[Jarsky]

Wait, you're installing ESXi bare metal on your desktop?

 

If you want it for running labs, then why dont you set it up in Hyper-V? Create virtual disks for your boot media and to create your datastores. 

Then you can have multiple ESXi hosts and create a vCenter using your trial key. You could also create other types of virtual storage such as creating LUNs for iSCSi. 

 

It would be much more beneficial so you can go through creating clusters, doing DRS, HA, etc...a single ESXi host, especially if you dont have vCenter, isnt going to teach you much about VCP-DCV. Most of the quesitons are around storage, clustering, migrations, DRS configurations, etc....

 

 

Have you done the course? If so the course will generally have labs that are setup using Hyper-V, at least every course ive done. So it should give you an idea on how they structure their lab.  As part of the training, you also get access to  VMwares Hands-on-Labs which gives you an instance you can use in their cloud. 

 

I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, to get VCP-DCV you needed to have:

- Attended a training course for your version (so vSphere 7)

- Done the Foundational Exam

- Do the DCV exam

 

Generally doing them in that order is the best way if you arent experienced with the vSphere ecosystem already. 

But you'd learn in the training course, that a single baremetal ESXi isnt really going to work. 

 

[leadeater]

As @Jarsky said, go with nested virtualization and leave your bare metal Windows OS alone. ESXi on a workstation will just be a living hell and little benefit towards your training. Enabling the Windows Hyper-V role and installing ESXi in VMs is the way to go here if it's for training purposes.

[cmo30]

On 8/12/2022 at 6:57 PM, Jarsky said:

Wait, you're installing ESXi bare metal on your desktop?

 

If you want it for running labs, then why dont you set it up in Hyper-V? Create virtual disks for your boot media and to create your datastores. 

Then you can have multiple ESXi hosts and create a vCenter using your trial key. You could also create other types of virtual storage such as creating LUNs for iSCSi. 

 

It would be much more beneficial so you can go through creating clusters, doing DRS, HA, etc...a single ESXi host, especially if you dont have vCenter, isnt going to teach you much about VCP-DCV. Most of the quesitons are around storage, clustering, migrations, DRS configurations, etc....

 

 

Have you done the course? If so the course will generally have labs that are setup using Hyper-V, at least every course ive done. So it should give you an idea on how they structure their lab.  As part of the training, you also get access to  VMwares Hands-on-Labs which gives you an instance you can use in their cloud. 

 

I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, to get VCP-DCV you needed to have:

- Attended a training course for your version (so vSphere 7)

- Done the Foundational Exam

- Do the DCV exam

 

Generally doing them in that order is the best way if you arent experienced with the vSphere ecosystem already. 

But you'd learn in the training course, that a single baremetal ESXi isnt really going to work. 

 

That sounds like a great idea I honestly never thought of that I might use VMware workstation pro though instead of Hyper V for VMware ESXI but won’t that we’re I’m running it in a type 2 Hypervisor degrade my performance for learning it as I’m going through the material instead of running it on bare metal we’re ESXI is a type 1 hypervisor that's meant to run on bare metal. Just trying to make sure because I want to do this correctly the first time 

[Jarsky]

53 minutes ago, cmo30 said:

That sounds like a great idea I honestly never thought of that I might use VMware workstation pro though instead of Hyper V for VMware ESXI but won’t that we’re I’m running it in a type 2 Hypervisor degrade my performance for learning it as I’m going through the material instead of running it on bare metal we’re ESXI is a type 1 hypervisor that's meant to run on bare metal. Just trying to make sure because I want to do this correctly the first time 

Modern CPUs have considerably less overhead with nested virtualization.  There's far more benefit in building out a proper lab with at least 2 virtual ESXi hosts.  I just ran it all from a laptop when I did my vsphere 6.5 and it was fine for learning.  

 

Workstation would be fine to,  but Hyper V us free

[cmo30]

52 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

Modern CPUs have considerably less overhead with nested virtualization.  There's far more benefit in building out a proper lab with at least 2 virtual ESXi hosts.  I just ran it all from a laptop when I did my vsphere 6.5 and it was fine for learning.  

 

Workstation would be fine to,  but Hyper V us free

So basically if I understand this correctly with doing nested virtualization and even though I'm running ESXI in a type 2 hypervisor on top of my windows 11 OS I shouldn't have a problem with resources being taken up and performance degradation with this modern hardware and with Running Nested virtualization 

[leadeater]

57 minutes ago, cmo30 said:

So basically if I understand this correctly with doing nested virtualization and even though I'm running ESXI in a type 2 hypervisor on top of my windows 11 OS I shouldn't have a problem with resources being taken up and performance degradation with this modern hardware and with Running Nested virtualization 

Not enough that will matter or degrade your usability to carry out lab work. The biggest factor to proper learning with VMware is having multiple ESXi hosts and shared backend storage for the hosts and the simplest and cheapest way to achieve this is @Jarsky advice. The next biggest requirement is enough ram to run any required VMs.

 

Just remember this is for the purpose of education and certification training, it's not actually a good way of running VMs for actual usage. Even so nested virtualization is actually commonly used in software development, we provide large VMs to some our developers and they use these to run their own VMs and Docker containers inside them.

[DogKnight]

Nested Virtualization will be fine. If you were wanting these servers to actually provide services, it may get a bit slow, but as this is just a training lab it should be fine. 

It will also make it easier with shutting down and restarting hosts, performing upgrades, etc. And it helps alleviate some of the hardware issues you run into with running ESXI on bare metal. I was not able to install ESXI on a NVME drive on my home lab either (either directly on the motherboard or via a PCIE expansion card). I am running it on bare metal myself but I have the benefit of permanent licenses.

Only thing I would recommend is more RAM if possible for your system. While many VM's will run with 4gb of RAM, being able to give them 8gb or more will make them more responsive. I am using an older X99 based platform and was able to pickup a relatively cheap 128gb of 2133mhz RAM online. The extra RAM capacity is more beneficial in my use case than faster RAM.