- 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"
- Expose CPUID to guest
- Under Advanced Select "CPUID Mask"
- Select "Expose the NX/XD flag to guest"
- Click "Advanced"
- Locate line ecx and modify to following:
- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- --H- ----
- Okay back to main vSphere window
- Finally we can install our Hyper-V OS
- Proceed to install as normal and enjoy creating Hyper-V VMs within ESXi environment.
Following resources we used:
- Veam blog: Nesting Hyper-V with VMware Workstation 8 and ESXi 5
- WinSCP
