My IT Resource Book: Nesting Hyper-V with VMware ESXi 5.5

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Nesting Hyper-V with VMware ESXi 5.5

This weeks posting focuses on the setup of my home virtual lab. I recently setup my home lab consisting of the following specs:

Supermicro X7DAL

2 - Quad Core Intel Xeon E5440 @ 2.83 GHz (8 vCPUs)
2 - NICs
24 GB of RAM
2 - 1 TB Hard drives

Evaluation version of ESXi 5.5

Most of my experience has been with VMWare so I choose this as my base system. Now I wanted to learn more about Hyper-V and have read it could be nested within ESXi. The following will guide you through configuring a ESXi 5.5 system to allow for nested Hyper-V usage.

In some places there are multiple ways to accomplish the same process through the vSphere client, CLI, or using a tool like WinSCP. The end result is to modify the config files so how ever you feel comfortable. I will be utilizing WinSCP to access the files and modify using a Windows text editor. You can download WinSCP here: http://winscp.net/eng/index.php

To start we need to ensure SSH access is enabled. I configured mine through vSphere client but you could do this through local access also.

Launch vSphere and connect to ESXi system
Ensure your system is select in left navigation box
Click "Configuration" tab in right navigation box
Under software click "Security Profile"
Click "Properties" for "Services"
Select "SSH" and click "Options"
Select desired startup policy

I choose to automatically start

Click Okay until back at main vSphere page

Now we need to modify our ESXi config file. This file is located at /etc/vmware/config.

Launch WinSCP
Connect to your ESXi server through a SFTP connection
Navigate to root level and then to /etc/vmware/
Select config and Edit
Add the following

vhv.allow = “TRUE”

Save and close the editor

Next we need to create the Hyper-V system profile, we will not be installing yet.

Go and create a new VM with specs you desire

I configured mine with following:

VM Hardware version 8
4 vCPUs
12 GB of RAM
2 NICs
40 GB Thin Hard drive
100 GB Thin Hard drive

Now we need to edit the VM Profile

In WinSCP navigate to VM location

/vmfs/volumes/[DateStore]/[VM Name]

Select [VM].vmx file and Edit
Add the following lines:

monitor.virtual_exec = "hardware"
hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE"

Save and close the editor

Before we install our OS we still need make some changes to our VM settings

Within vSphere access your VM's settings
Select "Options"
Enable CPU/MMU Virtualization for our VM

Under Advanced Select "CPU/MMU Virtualization"
Select "Use Intel VT-x/AMD-V for instruction set virtualization and Intel EPT/AMD RVI for MMU virtualization"