Running ESX in Fusion
Posted by ratatouille - on February 2nd, 2009 in Tips, Virtualization, Workstations | 5 Comments »
Being a 1st time Mac user I am truly impress with the performance & capability. I was a true PC users with windows & started to use Linux quite a bit for passed 2-3 years.
Recently with anonymous tips from someone I was able to get ESX running inside VMware Fusion Version 2.0.1 (128865).
Just create a VM as per normal wizard & select “Generic Linux” or “RedHat Linux” works well for me.
In order to get a guest VM power up inside ESX running on Fusion you will need the following setting inside the .vmx configuration:-
ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000″
monitor.virtual_exec = “hardware”
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = “true”
Once installed you can just connect with the standard VI client as per normal. ESX will detect all the BIOS & hardware config as well.
The above .vmx config will work with VMware Workstation from v6.x onwards.
As I was conducting some testing which required quite a number of VMs. I was able to have the following running in a single MacBook Pro:-
2 * 768Mb RAM Windows 2003 RC2
1 * 1.3Gb RAM ESX 3.5 U3
1 * 512Mb RAM Ubuntu 64bit
1 * 256Mb RAM Knoppix
As follow is hardware spec for my Mac
This beast is really value for $$$. I am sure I can’t run that many VMs in a M$ environment with the same hardware spec. As why I need to have so many VMs running will continue the series next time.
5 Responses
Cool! Finally I can see your 1st post here. Thanks.
[...] « Running ESX in Fusion [...]
” This beast is really value for $$$. I am sure I can’t run that many VMs in a M$ environment with the same hardware spec. As why I need to have so many VMs running will continue the series next time.”
From Rawang,Selangor.
Not totally agree with you…
I run ESXi 4 on vmware workstation 7 on my windows 7 ultimate
also running vmview4 VM complete setup.
1. windows 2003 standard as vcenter client
2. windows 2003 standard as domain controller (running newsid.exe on each server for diff. SID)
3. windows 2003 standard as view connection server
4 windows xp pro as view agent and
5. ubuntu server 9.10 with webmin1.510 as additional server(web server)
my spec.
AMD 8450
3.5GB RAM shared with IGP
500GB Seagate Hardisk
all running stable. tested for a few days while my windows 7 ultimate running other downloading program.
Cruzertech,
I do agree with you where you can deliver similar with Workstation 7 on Windows 7 Ultimate. With your AMD8450 I presume it is a full blown Desktop PC. I do have another setup using a Shuttle SX58H7 also out perform the Fusion on MacBook Pro. Just wonder whether you have it running on another notebook with similar spec you will get that kind of juice from it.
I think this is a never ending story depend what machine you are running and how you configure the VM on it. I used to have precision 490 for my personal workstation for my previous job loaded with 2 x quad core Intel E5400 series and come with 16GB of Memory and 2 x 750 GB SATA Drive. I even run more than 8 VM in the same machine without hitting to performance issue and each of the vm are running with 2 GB of memory as minimum. base OS could be vista, windows 7, XP or even the ESX hypervisor