How to install VMware ESXi Server 4.1 in VMware workstation 7.0

Author: Matt Song

Date: 2010/10/31

At first, make sure your machine's processor support Virtualization, (IntelVT or AMD-V, you can use some tools like securable to confirm)

Now let's get start, firstly, we need to create a VM.

Choose 'Custom(advanced)' at first windows





Hardware compatibility we choose 'Workstation 6.5-7.0'





At Guest operating system, we should choose VMware ESX, and select ESX Server 4.0





Now give your VM a name :)





To make sure our ESXi server work Properly, We should configure the VM only use 1 processor with 1 core





ESXi Server require at least 2GB memory, So we had to set the memory more than 2GB.





To avoid connection problem, we choose 'Use bridged networking'





The others configuration item we could all using the default setting. Click 'Finish' at last window.





Install the ESXi:

Right click the VM you just created, Go to 'Setting' window, insert the ESXi installation CD.

(You can get the ISO file from http://downloads.vmware.com/d/ )





Now start the VM, if you insert the ESXi installation CD and connected the CD drive to the VM, then you will get the windows below, choose first one to start the ESXi Installer





Wait for a while, press Enter to go to next page.





Press Enter again to agree the license, then we get this page below, choose a hard disk that your ESXi would installed on. (In this case we only got one disk, So just press enter.)





Press F11 to start install.





Installation has started...





BTW, if you set the VM's memory less than 2GB, you will receive a fail information that informs you to add more memory. So make sure your VM got enough memory.

At last, the installation finished :) , press enter to reboot.





After reboot, you will see the page below, Press F2 to setting our server.





When the server just installed, the root's password is empty, so just press enter.





Now we get into the setting page, you can check it one by one to customize your server :)





After you finished your setting, open IE, go to the URL that first window shows: (https://192.168.1.102/), as the page shows, download and install the vSphere Client.





Open the vSphere client, input the IP address(or hostname), user name and password. Click log on.





All done :)