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I just updated my install guide for putting ESXi onto a thumbdrive to reflect Update 4. Find it Here

I don’t usually write about specific products, but I have to drop a line about this new Atom 330 based board that I picked up from newegg. First off, it’s a dual core Atom CPU (with HT) that clocks in at 1.6ghz in 8 watts. Two SATA 2 ports and a single IDE attach the storage, 1 PCI slot, 1 DDR2 DIMM slot, onboard RTL gigabit LAN and Intel analog video with s-video out. Pretty much a 3 generation old PC. But here is the kicker, this little board runs EVERYTHING! Right now, I’m triple booting OSX (Kalyway with 0 tweaks, it just works) Mint Linux XFCE and VMWare ESXi (!). The ESXi did require me to smack in an intel based NIC, but the ICH7 chipset allows you to use the onboard sata storage as VMFS. The only real drag about this board is that it tops out at 2 gig of RAM, otherwise I would be ordering these things in bulk!

ESXi 3.5 only allows 4 virtual NICs to be assigned to a virtual machine. For many uses, that’s just fine, but my latest overly complex home network requires for 5 wireless network, 3 wired networks, 2 storage networks and a public hotspot type network. That’s no less then 11 network interfaces. Fortunately, I have the hardware to handle 802.1q vlans. Unfortunately, vmware doesn’t seem to like passing 802.1q headers through the vmnics and into the outside world. I spent a fair amount of time with a sniffer trying to figure this situation out and came across a white paper that saved my bacon. When you create a virtual interface in the VI Client, you have to set it to use vlan 4095 if you plan on using it as a pass-thru trunk interface. If you don’t, none shall pass. How frustrating is that?
Hey VMWare, consider this a feature request. How about a flipping check box labeled “Pass-Thru Interface” instead of a white paper buried on under the interwebs?

update The latest ESXi configuration guide mentions this on page 30 http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3i_e/r35/vi3_35_25_3i_server_config.pdf

In a never ending goal to have enterprise level stuff in my humble home, I have put this short guide together on how to assemble the cheapest VMWare ESXi server possible.  There are a few guidelines to keep in mind.

First, ESXi will run using SATA drives in AHCI mode connected directly to a motherboard that uses an Intel ICH7 or ICH9 chipset, but NOT an ICH8 or ICH10.

VMWare will use as much RAM as you can give it. RAM is more important then CPU.

Having said that, a multicore CPU is really helpful. ecspecially if you plan on using the software iSCSI initiator.

Use an Intel Pro 100 or Pro 1000 NIC. NIC support is pretty bare in ESXi, so just hop on newegg and spend 20 bucks on one.

We have two options, the first and cheapest is to use a motherboard based on the ICH7 or ICH9 chipset. ESXi will support SATA drives in AHCI mode connected to this chipset,so an ICH7/9 board, a few gig of RAM, a SATA drive and an Intel NIC will have you on your feet.  If you have this kind of setup, all you’re going to need to do is boot off of the ESXi installer CD and you’ll be done a short time later.

The second option is a bit more involved, but will work on ICH8 and ICH10 motherboards. I personally run an ICH10 based board with a quad core and 8 gig of RAM using this method.  This method also requires iSCSI storage to be available. I use Solaris and ZFS for my SAN. So, if you have an ICH8 or ICH10 motherboard, you need to create a USB bootable thumbdrive and install ESXi onto that. You can follow these simple instructions for linux or you can google for instructions for windows. Once you have your boot drive created, you will need to give your host an IP and use the management console to setup iscsi storage.  Have fun!

I’m having some serious stability issues with all of my ubuntu VMs on ESXi. After a period of several days, they have all locked up with a message about the mtp driver having read errors, or something along those lines. The short summary is that it looks like the scsi disk (emulated by ESXi, actually an iscsi LUN) becomes unavailable and lots of sense key errors are generated. The VM goes to 100% CPU and I have to reboot the entire ESXi server to recover. In the meantime, my SAN, Fedora, Solaris and Windows VMs never skip a beat.  I’ve rebuilt the VM several times with different version of ubuntu in the 8.x line and different patch revisions, but have finally gave up. I’m back on Fedora and we’ll see if it remains stable.