Anyone successfully install ESXi VM in Hyper-V

Question

_{Friday, September 7, 2018 6:03 PM}

Anyone successfully ESXi VM in Hyper-V

Why would I do this?
This is not a production environment. It's a LAB\Sandbox environment my employer ask to set up.

Why am I asking if anyone has done this on this forum?
VMware doesn't support ESXi installs on Hyper-V. I don't expect Microsoft to support a non-Microsoft product, but I'm asking in 
case anyone else has gotten this to work recently.

The server I am using has plenty of specs. I have 21 cores at my disposal, 130Gbs of ram, several TB of drive space. I'm using Win2016 Enterprise as the Host OS with Hyper-V.

If you do a Google search, you'll find some pages which have instructions to accomplish this. The most recent page I found was from around May or June of 2018.  A few tools are used to accomplish this, VMWare-PowerCLI, ESXi Customizer PowerShell scripts (2.6.0 is the latest working script to use) - to create a custom ESXi install disc image with the legacy ethernet net-tulip drivers needed to run in Hyper-V, and another PowerShell script to enable Nested VM support.

This would be enough to get 5.5, 6.0, and or 6.5 of ESXi to install, but it's not working, and I am getting a nfs41client failed to load when VMWare tries to install. Looks to me like the ethernet drivers are loading.

Again, wondering if anyone has gotten this to work. 

Thanks in advance.

All replies (7)

_{Saturday, September 8, 2018 12:51 PM}

"I don't expect Microsoft to support a non-Microsoft product, but I'm asking in case anyone else has gotten this to work recently."

You are correct.  Microsoft only supports Hyper-V 2016 on Hyper-V 2016.

I can understand your desire to ask here in case anyone might have done it, but you really would have more luck pursuing the issue in the other forums where you state you have found some information.

tim

_{Monday, September 10, 2018 6:38 AM}

Hi,

This article seems to match your desired implementation, please try it. If your encounter a issue during the process, please drop me screenshots of the error message.

(Please note：remember to cover up your private information for security.)

Install VMware ESXi on a Hyper-V

Please Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.

If you have any question or concern, please feel free to let me know.

Best regards,

Michael

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_{Tuesday, September 11, 2018 1:40 PM}

Hi,

Just checking in to see if the information provided was helpful. Please let us know if you would like further assistance.

Best Regards,

Michael

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_{Tuesday, September 11, 2018 4:15 PM}

Hi, 

I was able to get running this specific version of Esxi 6.0 on Hyper-v. Unfortunately, I am only able to start 32bit VM on the nested Esxi and not 64bit VMs. Apparently the passthrough of the ept iommu/SLAT of Hyper-v to ESX is not fully compatible with what ESX expects. any setting that may change this?

C:\ Get-VMProcessor -VMName Esxi-02 | select ExposeVirtualizationExtensions

ExposeVirtualizationExtensions

                          True

I suspect the virtual mmu below should show as hardware to work

2001-01-01T06:20:10.561Z| vmx| I125: [msg.monitorMode.usingHVInstead] Preferred mode unavailable. Using Intel VT-x/EPT instead.
2001-01-01T06:20:10.561Z| vmx| I125: [msg.cpuid.EPTUnsupported] VMware ESX does not support EPT on this host.
2001-01-01T06:20:10.561Z| vmx| I125:
2001-01-01T06:20:10.562Z| vmx| I125: Vigor_MessageRevoke: message 'msg.cpuid.EPTUnsupported' (seq 228152) is revoked

2001-01-01T06:20:10.562Z| vmx| I125: HV Settings: virtual exec = 'hardware'; virtual mmu = 'software'

Thanks, José Luis

_{Wednesday, September 12, 2018 12:39 PM}

"Apparently the passthrough of the ept iommu/SLAT of Hyper-v to ESX is not fully compatible with what ESX expects. any setting that may change this?"

Microsoft does not support running ESX on Hyper-V.  If you can get it run, you need to talk with VMware about what they would recommend.

tim

_{Saturday, September 15, 2018 1:26 PM}

Hi,

Just want to confirm the current situations.

Please feel free to let us know if you need further assistance.

Best regards,

Michael

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_{Saturday, May 23, 2020 10:41 AM}

You might want to try this script out https://github.com/sinloss/ESXiV. I'm new to here, so I cannot put a link here