Contents

Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 2
Download ................................................................................................................................................ 2
ESXi R6u2 installation ........................................................................................................................... 2
Network Setup......................................................................................................................................... 5
Switching to Static IP ............................................................................................................................. 11
vSphere Client Installation .................................................................................................................... 14
Connecting the second ESXi Server ....................................................................................................... 18
Storage Connection and Attachment Tips ............................................................................................ 19

Introduction

Bare minimum screenshots are used, that means just the required screenshot was taken to
keep the article short
Step by step installation process to install VMware ESXi /vSphere/VMware Hypervisor 6.2 on
Oracle Virtual Box 5
You need to have a minimum of 10 GB RAM, 50 to 100 GB disk space, 4 or more CPUs of a
minimum speed of 2 Ghz to play around (Installing vSphere/ESXi and creating 2 or 3 Servers
only)
This Hypervisor is actually a bare metal installation. In case you do not have separate
dedicated machine, and want to explore then follow the steps (install Oracle Virtual Box on
your PC)
Note: Even with a memory of 2 GB or 3 GB plus you can install vSphere/ESXi, but you cant
install virtual machines on top of it
Note: Vmware vCenter needs more memory (nearly 10GB of RAM), which installs database
etc. This vCenter is installed on a OS
This article uses the Oracle Virtual Box Network for assigning Static IP and playing around to
get an overview of Vmware Vsphere environment

Download

You should register yourself to get an evaluation copy from VMware

https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/home

When you are logged in click on trial and free products or go directly using the below link
https://my.vmware.com/en/group/vmware/evalcenter?p=vsphere6

Scroll down and you see vSphere ESXi and also Vmware vCenter Server too when you expand
[+] next to it, there you see vCenter available for Windows as well as for Linux

ESXi R6u2 installation

Create a new virtual machine and assign a name. Select the type as below
Note: Hypervisor is a Linux Kernel, that is the reason to select such settings, as shown below

To create two or three virtual machines, you need to have enough memory

Select the default Hard disk type

Leave the default disk space, in my case it was 8 GB.

It is a Dynamically allocated type, hence it does not take much disk space

Assign the CPUs

If you have enough video memory, assign it enough

It is optional, but do allocate enough graphic memory, say between 16 32 MB Memory

Attach the ISO file that you downloaded from VMware official Website

Network Setup

The network part is the interesting one

Expand advanced and select a Server type Adapter, which will skip the Network Adapter
Warning during the installation
The default is actually a Desktop Adapter assigned by Oracle Virtual Box

Press the OK button and Start the installation similar to start any virtual machine you
create

In case you skipped any of the above steps, it will hang here and stops the installation with
error

In my case I selected the German keyboard because mine is a German keyboard

Enter the Root password and press the TAB key if needed to confirm the given Root
password
The below one is just a warning. You can safely ignore it

You will be presented with the below IP, assigned by Oracle Virtual Boxs DHCP, which is not
a static IP. In the next section we change it
Open a browser and login to confirm the ESXi installation

We see the below message

In the next section we cover the installation of vSphere Client on a separate Windows PC (a
virtual machine) and connect from the Windows PC to ESXi server using the vSphere client

Switching to Static IP

Press the F2 key to customize the ESXi Server

The IPv6 is disabled in this case, as we set up a Static IP and get the IPs from Oracle Virtual
Boxs default DNS and DHCP Server
Press the Enter key to disable IPv6

The below is the Oracle Virtual Boxs default DNS and Gateway IPs
Enter the below details

Give a Hostname and domain set to localdomain, for example esxi-one.localdomain

(missed out to put that screenshot)

Press the Y followed by Esc key. Allow the ESXi to restart to save the changes

Finally you will see a STATIC IP when the ESXi restarts

Open a CMD Window and verify its pinging or not

Open a browser with IP or Hostname assigned in the previous step, once its done you can
verify it, as shown below

Create another ESXi Server, repeat the above steps, and assign an IP address of
192.168.56.102 to the second ESXi Server
It is good to repeat the practice one more time

vSphere Client Installation

My Windows PC was assigned the below IP. This is another VM of Windows 7 installed and
running in the same Oracle Virtual Boxs default network

So, installing the vSphere client on another PC and connecting using the vSphere Client
covered in this section. In my case the Windows 7 was with this IP 192.168.56.180
Attach the vSphere application to this Windows 7 and start the installation

I do not prefer to put in Program Files. If you like to change then just erase that program
files (x86)

Open it and type the IP or hostname of ESXi Server, assuming the ESXi server is running
already

In my case, there exists two ESXi Servers with IPs 192.168.56.101 and 192.168.56.102

You will see a Certificate, accept it to continue, as shown in the next screenshots

Alternatively click on View Certificate to verify and save in the default certificate directory

Assuming nothing went wrong, you will be presented with the ESXi environment

If plug-ins were installed already, they are shown below

Practice or working with installation of plug-ins is also a must. There exists enough plug-ins
for VMware products

To install enough VMs on this ESXi, there should be enough storage too
Just to have a glance where the storage configuration takes place, click on the
Configuration

Connecting the second ESXi Server

Storage Connection and Attachment Tips

Some of the points to be noted before creating virtual machines, as we are ready to explore the ESXi
environment :
1. This article is only about the installation, but we got to know how to attach disks to this ESXi server
or external storage server to store virtual machines
2. There are several ways and methods to attach storage, but the important thing is ESXi server
should make those disks available to us all the time as long as it is running or after a restart
3. I wrote another article on "Openfiler ", which can be considered as storage server for exploring
ESXi if you prefer to make use of storage server for your practise
4. If 'Openfiler' is not used then the Oracle Virtual Box should used to create disks and attach those
disks to the ESXi server (There exists the option to assign a new disk controller for SCSI, iSCSi too), but
the initial testing should be to check those attached disks are available even after a reboot of ESXi
5. Many experts had indeed provided articles about UDEV rules etc for such issues, one of the link
from an Oracle expert is noteworthy
https://oracle-base.com/articles/linux/udev-scsi-rules-configuration-in-oracle-linux
Also see the section "Create Shared Disks" on the below link
https://oracle-base.com/articles/11g/oracle-db-11gr2-rac-installation-on-oracle-linux-6-usingvirtualbox#create_shared_disks