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Ashish-Chorge
Ashish-Chorge

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Create nested ESXi (Virtual ESXi) on Physical ESXi server

This article is to prepare nested ESXi (virtual ESXi) on physical ESXi server. This is useful for doing small POC or creating 2 node vSAN cluster witness node.

  • Step 1. Create trunk portgroup as vesxi-trunk-portgroup in ESXi where you want to deploy vESXi

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  • Step 2. Create a new VM

    • CPU = 4
    • Memory = 8 GB
    • Disk = 12 GB to install ESXi + 4 GB Cache disk + 8 GB Capacity disk
    • Edit VM settings for CPU to enabled Hardware Virtualization

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  • Step 3. Power on and install ESXi similar to physical ESXi server.

  • Step 4. Configure ESXi for network and hostname

Make sure to give your ESXi vLAN. This is similar to your other physical hosts configuration.

  • Step 5. after installation of ESXi add beow 2 paramters in advance

    • scsi0:1.virtualSSD = true
    • scsi0:2.virtualSSD = true

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  • Step 6. Reboot the nested ESXi VM.

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