# installing esx in a kvm virtual machine

## Adel Ahmed

I'm trying to install esx on a kvm virtual machine, CPU check is fine but I get a purple screen of death stating:

no place on disk to dump data

no file configured to dummp data

no port for remote debugger

Im using a virtio disk with qcow 2 storage format(ive tried ide as well)

50GB storage size

any clue on what might be casuing this problem?

thanks in advance

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## szatox

```

    net/e100

    net/e1000

    net/e1000e

    net/bnx2

    net/tg3

    net/forcedeth

    net/pcnet32

    block/cciss

    scsi/adp94xx

    scsi/aic7xxx

    scsi/aic79xx

    scsi/ips

    scsi/lpfcdd-v732

    scsi/megaraid2

    scsi/mptscsi_2xx

    scsi/qla2200-v7.07

    scsi/megaraid_sas

    scsi/qla4010

    scsi/qla4022

    scsi/vmkiscsi

    scsi/aacraid_esx30

    scsi/lpfcdd-v7xx

    scsi/qla2200-v7xx

```

The list on wiki is pretty old, but I don't see virtio there. Why would it actually need to be supported, ESX is ment to run on bare metal and host VMs, not the other way around.

Also, does your CPU support nested virtualization? That's another possible pitfall you may encounter after you find a working virtual hardware for this.

Oh, and finaly, KVM is likely to conflict with vmware. I don't know how well it works when you use different hypervisors on different layers, but it's likely to become a problem too.

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## Adel Ahmed

I'm doing this for educational purpose

I need to create a tutorial on backing up esxi using tsm

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## Adel Ahmed

I'm still stuck and would appreciate any assistance provided

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## Adel Ahmed

bump

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## szatox

If you're still interested in it, I have installed ESXi 6 on KVM.

The image provided by vmware has guest's drivers for vmxnet3, which is also supported by quemu (so you have networking without hassle).

The first pitfall was RAM allocation. I started with 2 GB and assumption I can increase it after I login to esx and see it work, which turned out not to be enough for the installer (   :Exclamation:   ) to run. Once I bumped the limit it to 5GB, it succeeded.

However, (not very surprising), the other point I made earlier still holds: when I tried to run a VM inside, it popped big red bar saying it's running on an incompatible hypervisor. Maybe hardware support for nested virtualization would help with this. Maybe a compatible hypervisor would. VMware's virtual labs run on vmware. I don't know what the underlying hardware is.

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## 1clue

I think that for your paper to be useful in the real world you will need a bare metal installation. I would like to read your bare metal paper, but would not bother if you put it inside kvm.

Luckily people typically install the esxi hypervisor on a flash drive. 4g should be adequate but I'm not sure of the difcerence between esx and esxi.

You will still need at least one physical drive to use as a datastore, and something for the backup.

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## szatox

It's not meant for a real world  :Smile: 

Adel mentioned he needs a lab and wanted to do that with KVM. In fact I had the same reason to play with it and I also tend to use KVM. Performance* is not an issue as long as you have hardware support (and if you don't, bare metal won't help). At this point it's a matter of convenience and resources we already have in our hands. 

 *Quote:*   

> I get a purple screen of death stating:
> 
> no place on disk to dump data 

 btw, I created 20 GB sparse file for virtual DAS. After installation the file's size is 0.5GB and it automagically created 10 GB datastore inside.

* and the UI is much more responsive than those enterprisy things I have at work. Probably due to tunnelling with citrix and whatnot, but one can never be sure

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## Adel Ahmed

correct, not real word just a lab.

how did you get it to work? increasing memory to 5GB did not work, and I  cannot find vmxnet3 in virt-manager, should I edit the xml instead?

what is the type and parameters of the disk you are using?

thanks

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## 1clue

I understand that it's just a lab. 

I respectfully submit that the fact of running esx inside a vm probably negates the validity of the lab, unless the point was specifically to run a hypevisor within a non-similar hypervisor.

Really really not trying to be a pain here. I'm done here unless directly addressed again.

Thanks.

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## szatox

I don't use virt and run qemu directly with command line. Also, my successfully installed esx failed to boot with the very same message you posted, after I removed cdrom.

I guess starting with cdrom specified in front of the target drive image wasn't a good idea. Silly as it sounds, I had to reinstall afterwards.

Hint:

qemu-system-x86_64 -name esx -enable-kvm -m 5000 -smp cores=2 -drive file=./esx_drive.img,cache=none,format=raw -drive file=./esx_install.iso,cache=none,media=cdrom -netdev type=tap,id=net1 -device vmxnet3,netdev=net1

The above line must be run as root. Running as user is possible, but takes a bit of preparation on your part (you must be able to configure TAP yourself)

For convenience I have dhcpd bound to a bridge and a script that enslaves the tap interface before my vm binds it, so it will receive an IP as soon as it requests it. For a single test or two, setting IP manually on the TAP and inside the vm can work just as well though.

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