Installing VMware ESX 4

Note: This is the base VMware ESX 4. It does not include update 1.

I’am using the following image:

esx-DVD-4.0.0-164009.iso
1. When booting from the DVD you will be presented with the ESX 4.0 installation menu. As you can see there are a few options for installing ESX 4.0. We’ll be using the “Install ESX in graphical mode”. Press enter or just wait for the timer to reach 0 and it will continue automatically.

VMWare ESX Server Step by Step Installion Guide

VMware ESX Server is mainframe-class virtual machine software that runs on a Linux kernel. It is a highly scalable platform that increases the efficiency of Intel-based hardware.

VMware ESX Server has some hefty minimum hardware requirements:

• Two CPUs (supports up to 16)
• Processors must be at least 900 MHz Pentium III Xeon
• 512 MB of RAM
• At least one Ethernet card
• SCSI, Fibre Channel, or RAID controller

These are minimums, so obviously you'll need to have more power than that. VMware recommends lots of RAM, multiple Ethernet cards (some virtual machines may run best with dedicated cards), and a separate disk controller that is dedicated to hosting the virtual machines. For more on the system requirements, see this page from the VMware Web site. VMware has also published information on supported hardware.