Running ESX 3.5 and 3i Under VMWare Workstation 6.5

As result of battle between Microsoft and VMWare (for place on Virtualization market), VMWare announced that a new VMWARE ESXi server became FREE.
This news generated a lot of interest and many people started to try install VMWARE ESXi on VMWARE Workstation, just to see it and learn.

By little Googling you will find a lot of sites, where explained how to run ESX 3.0 server on VMWARE Workstation 6.x, but you will see that this tricks is not working for ESX 3.5. Equally they are working, but you unable to start virtual machine inside ESX.

To make ESX 3.5 fully working on VMWare Workstation we need to do the following steps:

1. Download and install Workstation 6.5 (Right now you can download RC version from official version from www.vmware.com)
2. Inside Workstation 6.5 create a new VM, but keep in mind select Custom in "New Virtual Machine Wizard. As Hardware Compatibility select Workstation 6.5. You need to select an Redhat x64 Linux version. Set to use One CPU. At least 1024 MB ram. As a Virtual disk type select SCSI and as SCSI controller select LSI Logic (Recommended).

In my testfrom VM settings I removed USB Controller, Sound Card, Floppy drive. In Display settings I deselect the Accelerate 3D graphics checkbox. On network tab I've selected Bridged and Replicate physical network connection state. On Processors tab select Intel VT or AMD-V as preferred mode.

OK, now is very important part :). Close VMWare Workstation and got to .vmx file of your just created VM. Open .vmx file in Notepad and add (change) the following lines:

ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000″

monitor.virtual_exec = “hardware”
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = “true”

Save .vmx file, start VMWARE Workstation and you are ready to start install a new Vmware ESX 3.5.