vSphere 5 - How to Install and Configure VMware ESXi 5

In this video tutorial I will guide you through the installation and configuration of VMware ESXi 5

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[sysadmintutorials]

Hi Marie, vCenter is not mandatory, it's purely used for the vSphere suite or to manage multiple ESXi servers. Also without vCenter you don't get extended reporting. Yes you can install ESXi on UCS blades or a windows box, just make sure the storage controller or raid card is compatible with ESXi. Yes I usually install the vsphere client within vcenter.

[blisterj]

thanks got me out of a bit of a conundrum whilst trying to install this

[aryanpathan]

Thank you for making it so simple and easy to understand!

[tsunghsiwu]

detail oriented and clearly articulated. thank you

[sysadmintutorials]

Besides the motherboard and CPU make sure you check the storage controller compatibility. There's been a few users that have put together a system only to find out their storage controller is not supported and therefore can't see any disks

[sysadmintutorials]

yes ESXi 5 is free, but if you want to manage it via vCenter and utilise such things as vmotion, storage vmotion, clustering, etc you need to license ESXi per cpu

[sysadmintutorials]

Hi, no you don't need to do anything different just let the installer partition the drive for you. But if you have 2TB of disk space I would probably keep that aside and have ESXi boot for USB thumbdrive.

[sysadmintutorials]

ESXi by itself is free, but if you want to centrally manage it via vcenter then you have to license it

[sysadmintutorials]

@PaRoDiEr1993 you can use any ip configuration on your local subnet so that you can make a connection.

[sysadmintutorials]

@MikeeHun Yes you can connect with the vsphere client to your local esxi server and create a virtual machine, install, configure etc. Is this what you mean ?

[sozebeatz]

Great tutorial! Thumbs up! Worked as a charm.

[thenerdfamily]

If your doing this the same way as this user, make sure you are not using NAT on VMware Workstation. Ensure the network connection is bridged and then ensure the ip address is on the same sub net as your local pc is. Unsure if you're doing the same thing as he is or not.

[sysadmintutorials]

I haven't seen this issue before, but usually you just make sure your mouse is hovering on top of your ESXi console, as in where the text is inside the console, click it and your in the console. From there you can type, use the arrow keys and mouse. One thing to check, do you have the enhanced virtual keyboard enabled if you edit the VM and click on the General Tab ?

[sysadmintutorials]

Hi, if you are running ESXi on its own without vcenter you won't be able to cluster. VCenter is a requirement to be able to cluster ESXi hosts. You can install vCenter for free and i believe it will run for 30 days in eval mode, after that it will cease to work.

[sysadmintutorials]

Hi, you can try and run nested, meaning you install ESXi and then install another ESXi as a virtual machine, I haven't tried it this way though. Or you could install Windows, VMware Workstation and then run both esxi's as vm's

[sysadmintutorials]

@PaRoDiEr1993 What version of VMware Workstation are you using ? What is the hardward on your host system ? Is your OS 32 or 64-bit ?

[sysadmintutorials]

@swtpoison46 I'm actually using VMware workstation to demo the ESXi installation

[sysadmintutorials]

Hi Michael, it sounds like the vmware drivers do not support your physical nic. Are you able to obtain drivers from the manufacturer of your motherboard ?

[hoodster]

Hi, I have a problem right at the beginning. After it loads the installer it goes to that yellow and black screen and in the yellow section it says "Starting VMKernel Initialization". It just stays like this. I tried leaving it for an hour like this but still nothing happens. What should I do?

[sysadmintutorials]

Do you mean you can't install ESXi on your Pentium D computer or you are trying to run vmware player on it ?