Deploy ESXi 8 in a VMware Workstation

hey guys I'm going to show you how you can deploy VMware esxi8 in VMA workstation in this video so many people use VMware Workstation to set up lab environments let's see how we can deploy esxi8 as a nested esxi host in VMware Workstation by the way it is not supported for production use but you can use it for lab purposes VMware Workstation is a type 2 hypervisor that runs as an application on top of your existing workstation or laptop running the Windows operating system it uses existing Hardware to run your lab environment just so you know to run esxi hosts in VMware Workstation you need to have CPU and memory Resources with faster storage such as nvme or SSD I'm running this lab on a PC that has an Intel Core i7 processor and 32 gig of memory this PC also has an nvme disk alright let's get started I've already downloaded the esxi8 iso media but let me show you how to download that navigate to the website customerconnect.vmware.com click login and it will ask you to sign in with your existing VMware account if you don't have one you can create a free one by clicking on sign up now but I'll sign in with my existing account click sign in it will take me to the home page of VMware customer connect so I will click on all products scroll down a little and click on view download components right next to VMware vsphere here you can see different editions of vsphere such as Essentials Essentials plus standard enterprise Enterprise Plus desktop vsphere scale out and vsphere Robo under each of these editions you can see VMware vsphere esxi8 and it doesn't matter which one of them you select to download the ISO file because the binaries for all these different editions are same I will click go to downloads next to VMware vsphere esxi8 under Essentials now it says that my account is not entitled to download the ISO file of esxi8 but I can download a trial version of esxi8 and I can run this version for a period of 60 days so I'm going to click on download Trial scroll down a little now you can manually download the iso image or zip file of VMware vsphere hypervisor esxi8 you want to download the ISO file I'll click on manually download it will prompt you to save the ISO file but as I mentioned before I've already downloaded the ISO file so I'll skip this I'll click cancel now let me go ahead and show you how to deploy an esxi as a VM in VMware Workstation I will open up VMware Workstation click on file and click on new virtual machine I will keep the typical recommended configuration selected and I'm going to click next in the guest operating system installation screen I will select installer disk image file ISO which will be used to boot the ISO file and deploy the guest operating system I will click on browse and navigate to the location where I have stored my esxi8 ISO image select that and click on open it's okay if it says it could not find the operating system click next in the select a guest operating system I'm going to select VMware ESX and the highest version I can select is VMware esxi7 although I'm installing VMware esxi8 this is perfectly fine for demo Labs so I'm going to click next specify the virtual machine name I will name this as esx01 and specify the location of the virtual machine by clicking browse I I am okay with the default location I will keep that and click next for the OS disk of esxi8 you need 32 gig which is the minimum requirement I will specify that and I'm going to keep the default selection split virtual disks into multiple files and click next I'm going to customize the hardware by clicking customize Hardware because I need to add a few more Hardware resources to this esxi host when it comes to memory you need to have more memory in production environment but if you are running esxi8 you need a minimum of 8 gig of memory and this is completely fine for a lab environment so I'm going to specify 8 gig which is 8192 processors again you need to have more processors and cores more is better the minimum requirement is 2 and to start with for a lab environment two CPU cores is okay very important you need to have this option checked virtualize Intel VTX EPT or amdv rvi as this will ensure that you can run virtual machines on top of your virtualized esxi host also called as nested esxi host one of the prerequisite is that you need to enable hardware virtualization in your bios how to enable that you can Google it and it is very easy but make sure to remove any desktop version of hyper-v or any other virtualization software such as Oracle virtualbox Docker desktop otherwise it will say virtualized Intel VTX or EPT is not supported on this platform when you try to power on the nested esxi host on VMware Workstation you also need to run this command to turn off the hypervisor in the BCD Boot and after running this command you need to reboot the system you also need to remove some of the virtualization features such as virtualization machine platform and wsl2 Linux subsystem also disable memory Integrity option found under settings privacy and security Windows security device security core isolation and memory Integrity so when you go to system information by opening Ms info 32 app all the way down it should not say a hypervisor is detected if it says like that then you will not be able to run nested virtualization on your esxi host you can still run esxi host in VMA workstation if there is another hypervisor detected but you need to uncheck this option virtualize Intel VTX EPT or amdv or rvi and then you can power on the VM next up network adapter there's just one network adapter I'm going to add another one by clicking add select network adapter and click finish currently both these network adapters are set to Nat I'm going to change that to custom and Select vmnet 1 and that's where my other VMS are connected to also the number of network adapters that you need totally depends on your requirements and what you're trying to build for your Labs two network adapters are just fine but you can certainly add additional network adapters up to 10. let's say you want to dedicate network adapters for different types of network traffic that you are going to create for your esxi host but even with two network adapters you can still use something like a front port and use different types of network traffic for your esxi host again it depends on how you design your network for your lab I don't need USB controller so I'm going to remove that click close And click finish you see we only have one 32 gig of virtual disk for this VM where I'm going to install esxi operating system but you can have multiple virtual disks let's say if you're going to use this nested esxi host as vsan hosts then you can create let's say another four disks three of them can be capacity disks and one of them can be caching disk or if you just want to save some VMS locally on the host you can add a single disk or few more disks depending on what you're trying to build for your lab just one disk is also fine if you are going to attach some iSCSI lens to this host I am okay with one disk for this demo and I'll click on power on this virtual machine to boot the VM now it will automatically boot into the esxi installer which will take a few minutes on the welcome screen press enter to continue press f11 to accept the end user license agreement now it will scan for available devices it has detected our 32 gig virtual disk under local I'll keep that selected and press enter to continue to install the esxi operating system I will keep the default keyboard layout us default and press enter to continue specify the root password for the host and confirm it again press enter to continue press f11 which will confirm to re-partition this empty disk to install esxi now it will start the installation wait for it to complete it will take a few minutes okay esxi8 has been successfully installed press enter to reboot now it will boot into the installed esxi okay it is up and running and this is your DC UI which is a direct console user interface so I'm going to press f2 to make additional configuration in dcui I will type the root credentials when it prompts you press enter now on the left side you have different system customization options the first one is configure password which is used to set the root password I've already configured it I am okay with the current password the next one is configure lockdown mode which is grayed out because it can be configured only if this host is managed by a vcenter server next configure management Network I'll select that and press enter so configure management Network allows you to configure the network settings for your management VM kernel adapter on your es6i host in here the first option is network adapters so it's already selected it I'm going to press enter I have two next and I'm going to select both of them for the management Network so I'm going to select VM Nick 1 and press the space part to select I'll press enter to OK the selection next VLAN I don't have a VLAN ID configured in my lab environment but if you have one you can specify the VLAN ID I'm going to press Escape next is ipv4 configuration so I'm going to select that and press enter currently it is set to Dynamic but I'm going to assign a static ipv4 address so I'm going to select Set static ipv4 address and network configuration now enter in the ipv4 address for the host subnet mask and default gateway so I will assign 192.168.10.11 and the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 and and the default gateway is 192.168.10.254 I'm going to press enter to save the changes next is IPv6 configuration I'm going to select that and press enter I'm going to disable IPv6 because I don't use it so select disable IPv6 and press enter next is DNS configuration again it is set to Dynamic so I will assign static DNS servers by selecting use the following DNS servers and hostname for primary DNS server I will specify my DNS server which is 192.168.10.1 I don't have an alternate DNS server for the hostname I will type ESX 01 press enter to save the changes next custom DNS suffixes select that and press enter in here I will type my ad domain name which is tasty Biryani dot local press enter to save the changes now press Escape so to apply these changes you need to reboot the host I will press the letter Y to reboot the host you can see it has taken the new IP address and the hostname I will press f2 again and type in my root credential press enter backend system customization next option is restart management Network which is used if in case you made any changes to the network settings on the host next is test management Network select that and press enter in here you can ping your gateway IP address DNS server IP address and also do a name resolution for the fully qualified domain name of the host which is esx01.tasty biryani.local so I'm going to press enter and you can see the test is successful I'm going to press enter the next one is Network restore option which would basically reset the standard switch settings and distribute it switch settings configure keyboard you can change the keyboard layout troubleshooting options you can enable or disable esxi shell SSH also you can modify the timeouts for esxi shell and SSH timeouts as well as dcui Idle timeout you can also restart the management agents on the host if it has connectivity issues with the vcenter server which is managing this host so I'm going to press Escape view system logs will allow you to look at various logs of the host View support information will show you certificate of the host and license key that is applied reset system configuration will basically reset all system settings of the es6 AI host to scratch press escape and that's it your host is ready to be managed by a vcenter server or it can run as a standalone esxi host just in case if you want to access the host UI simply type the IP address of the host which is 192.168.10.11 press enter click Advanced click proceed and here type the root credential and press enter click ok ok there you go this is your host UI so this is how you deploy esxi8 in VMware Workstation I hope you find this video useful and for more videos like these

Channel: vCloudBitsBytes

Views: 10,423

Keywords: Deploy VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 8, Deploy ESXi 8 in VMware Workstation, VMware vSphere 8, ESXi 8, Install ESXi 8, ESXi, DCUI, ESXi 8 iso file, VMware, vSphere, vCenter Server, Create ESXi 8 VM, nested ESXi host, vmware, esxi, vsphere

Id: 6UBjTNL2XTI

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 15 2023