I need to get a small VMware vSphere 4 ESX lab farm up and running, and I’d love to do it on Apple Mac Minis just for compactness and the silence. It has to be vSphere ESX or ESXi, not VMware Fusion or Parallels. Has anybody tried it, and if so, does the Mac Mini WiFi network card work?
Update – It doesn’t, but check out this homebrew hardware list for VMware ESX. It’s full of cheap hardware gear off-the-shelf that you can use to run VMware in a home lab.
Update Sept 5, 2011 – VMware vSphere 5 is out, and I’ve got a 2010 Apple Mac Mini with a Core 2 Duo processor, so I figured I’d try installing ESXi on it. It boots:
VMware ESXi 5 installing on Apple Mac Mini 2010
But when it comes time to do the install, the keyboard doesn’t work. Tried an Apple keyboard and a Microsoft Natural keyboard, but neither work. They do work during boot, but as soon as ESXi starts loading, the caps lock light stops flashing when I hit the caps lock key. Dang.
Apple Mac Mini hardware not supported in ESXi 5
Dagnabbit. Yes, I know I can run Lion, and run VMware Fusion inside of that, and then run VMware vSphere inside of that, but that’s not exactly the most elegant solution when I want to take a demo show on the road.
Ubuntu runs well on the mini.
I have managed to inject the nic drivers into the install cd and can get past that part of the process but I can’t get past the next point as it doesn’t recognise the usb keyboard!
http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2232
Hi zebedy,
I didn’t have any trouble with the usb keyboard on esxi 4.0 update 1. I was going to try something similar to what you did and update the nic drivers with the oem file, however I never quite got around to it. With the release of esxi 4.1, the nic APPEARS to be supported, however this is where i’m having trouble with the usb keyboard. I believe it is an issue with the usbarbitrator process, as the cd boot gets to the screen asking to install/repair, but you can’t do anything with it. I’m having a similar problem when attempting to build an esxi 4.1 vm under workstation 6.5, however what i’ve managed to be able to do is upgrade an existing esxi 4.0u1 vm to esxi 4.1, and by looking at the logs, the usbarbitrator seems to be removing the usb devices from the host at startup. Am working on it at the moment and will let you know how I go. (I hope to come back with some good news!)
Gavin
Does this work ?
As far as I know, the usbarbitrator process takes all usb devices under vmkernel’s control instead of the COS.
I figured I could get around the usb issue using a KickStart file but that just gives an error about not being able to find a working nic!?
So frustrating…
Any news about this ?
Nope, sorry.
It’s been almost a years since I started monitoring this thread and nothing…
I could only hope one day, I’ll wake up and to find out that Apple has released a Mac Mini capable of running VMware ESXi.
I just bought a Mac Mini Server Edition (2010) and i will try to continue to see if there is anything more i can do to get this working. Not that i am a specialist in Linux but ill search for help.
donnib
Still no news (July 2011)?
Sam – no, but keep in mind that ESXi 5.0 is coming within the next 30-60 days, so that may change things.
Thanks, will keep an eye out…
Hi,
I’ve been following this thread for a while now. In the mean time I’m helping myself with VMware Fusion on a latest mini server, 8Gb of ram and a 256Gb ssd in it. Performance is great as long as you don’t boot a second machine. Running 2 machines with each 2Gb of Ram is dreadful. So I can only hope ESXi has better resource mgmt for multiple machines than fusion…(and of course not having MacOs sitting in between)
I have also been working on this project for a while.
I was able to get further into the install process by using a kickstart.
http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=3310
The install cd actually has a default kickstart that does the following:
vmaccepteula
rootpw mypassword
install –firstdisk –overwritevmfs
network –bootproto=dhcp –device=vmnic0
%post –interpreter=python –ignorefailure=true
import time
stampFile = open(‘/finished.stamp’, mode=’w')
stampFile.write( time.asctime() )
So, it accepts the eula, sets the password to ‘mypassword’, wipes and installs on the first disk it finds (forcing it to overwrite if it finds a vmfs partition). It sets the network to dhcp on the first nic.
With that, the keyboard/mouse missing doesn’t matter during the install . . .if it would work.
On the mini 4,1 it drops at the point where it’d touch the disk with:
“An error has occurred while parsing the installation script
error:file://etc/vmware/weasel/ks.cfg:line 12: install –firstdisk specified, but no suitable disk was found.”
I haven’t yet tried clearing the partition table ahead of time on it to see if maybe the existing guid partition table is pissing it off.
To try the default kickstart, hit shift-o when it gives you the option and add this to the runweasel line:
ks=file://etc/vmware/weasel/ks.cfg boot
Just posted my results on the VMware communities forum. Copied here FYI:
Unfortunately ESXi 5.0 does not work on a Mac mini (2011 server i7 quad-core). The ethernet does not work.
Purchased a Macmini5,3 yesterday and tried to install ESXi 5.0 on it. My friend who builds/administers ESXi boxes (as runs it on plenty of unsupported configurations) and I were able to boot ESXi via a USB flash drive, but could not get TCP/IP working over the ethernet.
It fully booted as per (http://gregcarriger.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/turn-your-laptop-into-an-esxi-5-0-host/). Things looked promising – keyboard was working, and we could see the hard drives in the logs, but we ultimately could not ping the box, and obviously couldn’t connect to it using ESXi client.
TCP/IP would not run on it – it did not pick up an IP address even though a DHCP server was running on our network. Manually setting the IP address did not work either. We even set up an ARP route to try to get any packets to the box. All without luck.
We dug around to find info on the Broadcom 57765 ethernet (also in Macmini5,1, and I think the 2010 Mac mini), and confirmed it was recognized by the tg3 driver. Aside from seeing its MAC address (and confirming it was up by checking into the stats on the managed switch). We were even able to force speed/duplex settings (i.e. 10 half duplex) and saw it reflected on the managed switch. But at no point could we get packets on/off the interface.
—–
It’s pretty close – maybe somebody smarter than us will get this working!
Oh, my friend suggested that had the Ethernet worked, the two drives would run in a RAID configuration – which matters to those who want higher availability. Also, we weren’t able to acquire a ThunderBolt display to see if the NIC on that was supported.
Maybe somebody smarter than us can get this to work!
doh! the two drives would *NOT* run in a RAID configuration.
I have a Macmini5.1 (i5-2415M CPU @ 2.30Ghz
I can install ESXI 5.0.0 Buid 469512 but not network working, i can see the mac address of it but no trafic running…
I put a manual ip, try to ping and nothing.
Hi Pedro,
Can you post instructions on how you got ESXi 5 to install on the mac mini even without the NIC side of things working? Did you use a modified ks.cfg file?
I am able to get it to boot to the install and unfortunantly cant get it to see the first disk to install too using the –firstdisk command in the ks.cfg file.
Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers,
xdefiantx.
I have a
Macmini5.1 (i5-2415M CPU @ 2.30Ghz
I boot from USB, and install it on another USB.
In new macminis you are able to boot from usb, tomorow, i post a step my step.
Hi Pedro,
I’m curious if your setup is already working. Next to ESXi there’s a possibility to run XENserver on a Mac Mini but I prefer to have ESXi running..
Thanks in advance!
Bart
I have a Mac Mini 5,3 (i-7 2.0) we installed ESXi 5.0 on and we are seeing the same thing, Mac address appears in our managed switch but it never actually works.
Have you tried something like this to get the broadcom network card to work?
http://pwong-tipsandtricks.blogspot.com/2010/06/install-broadcom-driver-for-vmware-esxi.html
I can get it working… if someone is willing to get me a remote access to a mini…
Dude, seriously? C’mon. If you’re the kind of person who can get it working, then you’ve got access to a Mac Mini already through your friends and network.
Go to http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
Download UnetBootIn
Run UnetBootIn
Select ISO > vmware.esxi5.iso
Select USB > select your pen drive
Click ok! Than boot from usb.
All alright except no ip.
Same issue with the MBP (Late 2011) same BCM57765 chipset detected as tg3, but no traffic.
Glad I found your posts. I was just about to start doing exactly the same install on y new mac mini quad core server. I’ll now revert to Lion-Fusion 4 and hope, like you guys, that someone smarter looks at this and figures out a fix
We figured out how to get VMware ESXi 5 working on a Mac Mini 2011 (5,3). We did a write up to help those to update the Broadcom NIC driver. Thanks to the Author of this blog for starting this thread.
http://paraguin.com/2012/01/10/the-mac-mini-vmware-esxi-5-server-part-2-installation/
Thanks a lot.
I can confirm that the Paraguin process above does also work on a MBP 8,2. Very sweet.