ESXi Hypervisor on an Old Laptop

What you'll need:

• An old PC. In my case this is a Dell Latitude E5750. My best advice to you: make some friends who work in IT at larger companies. They refresh devices every 3-5 years and frequently will just give away old equipment (sans hard drive). Sometimes you can even get halfway decent networking gear this way as well.

• 2 USB drives. (V: 2? In this economy?) We're setting this up a specific way. The hypervisor is going to run off a USB drive, the VMs will all reside on the internal M2 hard drive. One USB drive is the install drive, the other is the one that will actually run the hypervisor and will be permanently mounted to the laptop. Why? If the USB drive fails, getting a new hypervisor back up and running is a 10-15 minute problem rather than surgery to replace an internal drive. Likewise, VMs shouldn't exist on the same drive as the hypervisor unless you have some redundancy up and running...I do not. From what I hear, there are relatively few R/W operations to the hypervisor once running. (V: You may live to regret this...)

• RUFUS. There are many .iso writing programs out there which we could use to write to the USB boot drive...I like Rufus. Get it.

The play-by-play:

1) Let's go get some software! - You'll need to register at VMware before you're allowed to download software. Don't worry, it's free. Register an account here. Once you've registered, you need to go find the vSphere ESXi hypervisor download. Lucky for you, I've hunted it down for you and included the link right here. Speedbump: you have to register to download the software. Click the register button and follow through with the request, then head back to the link and you'll be able to download it. This is highly involved for a single step, but it really is just one step: get the hypervisor...(V: You're really bad at this, you know?)

2) Burn, baby, burn! - It's not called burning anymore...But I grew up in the days of actual circle-shaped disks. (V: We grew up in the days of the square shaped disks) We're going to write the .iso that we just downloaded using Rufus. First, plug in your USB drive and make sure there weren't any critical puppy photos that you forgot to save elsewhere. Then, launch Rufus. Select your USB device in the dropdown, then click the select button and find the .iso you just downloaded. Depending on your system, you may need UEFI or BIOS. UEFI is newer and has more features, but in my case, I need it to boot to BIOS so I select the MBR partition scheme (BIOS cannot read GPT). Set the volume label to whatever you want (ESXi-Boot was my choice), and click START. Presto...you're boot drive is ready, ma'am.

3) Boot that mofo! - Remember that second USB drive you've been holding in your hand...it's day has finally come. Plug ONLY the boot USB drive into your machine and hit the boot menu key. (V: We couldn't get the actual boot USB to show up when they were both plugged in, it's ok, we like to make things harder) On my lappy, it's the F12 key. It may be delete, esc, F2, or F11 - I've seen them all on devices...it may even be a secret 6th option. Select the USB Boot option and let the fireworks begin.

At this point, it's probably good to go into your BIOS/UEFI settings and change the boot order for your machine. Put the USB Drive option first - that'll save headaches later. If you don't, you're going to need to hit the boot menu key every time you reboot - which hopefully won't be that often, but still.

4) Installify! - Once you see the blue screen of life, plug your second USB drive in. Drive discovery will happen automatically so you want to make sure it's there when ESXi does its thing. It will automatically launch the installer after 5 seconds so if you need more time because you're clumsy or you thought maybe you didn't need your USB drive yet, hit the down arrow which will stop the launch sequence. Then select the ESXi installer option at the top, and here we go! Note, this is going to take a bit of time, especially if you're running off a slow USB drive. (V: Like this guy!!!)

You'll get a gray box...It's unsorted list time:

• Hit Enter to continue

• Hit F11 to accept the consequences of your fate

• Use the up and down arrows to select your second USB drive (the one to which we're installing ESXi) and hit enter

• Hit Enter again to destroy the memes on the drive

• Select your keyboard with arrow keys and hit Enter

• Come up with a secure password (V: I like Password1) Do not use Password1. Use something long, strong, and don't do it wrong. Re-enter the password and hit Enter

• Hit F11 and start to sing your favorite song in your head (V: Around the worrrld. A-round the worrrrrrrld) At least I know the lyrics to that one.

• Wait...

• Remove the Boot drive and hit Enter to reboot

Congratulations! You're now booted into your ESXi hypervisor. Nice job, dude!

As this post was just about installation, there will be a new one about configuration. Stay tuned...