Great news – Pedro Costa has got a working solution! Apple Mac Mini 2010, 2011, and 2012 models all boot a patched version of VMware ESX 5.0:
VMware ESXi 5 Running on an Apple Mac Mini
I’d always wanted a small VMware vSphere 5 (ESXi) lab farm up and running, and I wanted to use Apple Mac Minis just for compactness and the silence. It has to be vSphere ESX or ESXi, not VMware Fusion or Parallels, because my clients all use ESXi and I wanted to be able to do things like VMotion and Storage VMotion.
These ISOs work for my Apple Mac Mini 2011 (5.1):
- http://goo.gl/VreXa EFI Version
- http://goo.gl/7M5kX NoEFI Version
Download the ISO, burn it to CD, and boot from it. The install goes flawlessly. The USB keyboard works, video out (via HDMI!) works, and the onboard Ethernet wired network card works. WiFi doesn’t, but that’s okay – I wouldn’t even run a lab off that.
Presto – my Ikea datacenter comes to life!
My Ikea Datacenter
That’s two Mac Minis running VMware ESXi 5, a cheap $250 Netgear NAS handling the storage duties for shared storage, and a few other pieces of unrelated tech gear.
Thanks, Pedro!
Brent Ozar
Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.
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Did you ever get this to work?
I’m curious as well. I’m thinking of buying a mini and setting it up with a few virtual machines. Anyone knows if ESX runs on Mac mini hardware?
I haven’t bought a Mac Mini yet, but if somebody wants to donate me one, I can find out real fast.
The following excerpt from the VMWare datasheet doesn’t give me good hopes:
VMware ESX has been certified with industry-leading rack, tower and blade servers from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, IBM, NEC, Sun Microsystems and Unisys.
Certification on hardware is an expensive process that the hardware vendor typically pays for. Apple wouldn’t bother paying to get the Mini certified on ESX due to the low number of users.
i was trying to find out of boreness if someone did it yet and found your blog.
I haven´t tried it myself yet, but have a bit expirience in running esx on uncertified hardware – if you make sure to use common hardware which is typicly also used in the (low end) servers listed on vmwares compatibilty list, it works pretty charming. but you probably won´t get any support from vmware in case of troubles.
i havent compared the minis hardware with the compatibilty list (which is very annoying, since you have to find out seperatly which hardware runs on the servers listed)
but i seriously doubt that it is compatible. already the wacky LAN card was not supported in nearly any common linux distribution until a few months ago.
my mac mini runs a common linux distribution with xen enabled kernel – but that is far away from vmware´s useability.
@ work i run the very very cheap but uncertified Dell T105 tower server (sometimes available @ 150€) & boot from a 1gb usb stick and the guests reside on centralized NFS storage connected via multiple gigabit ethernet links – cheap, great performance and imho best for setting up a vmware lab or non mission critical servers
I have tried both ESX and ESXi 3.5 update 2 on Mac Minis with the same result, kernel panic.
We bought 4 at work to use for demos using VMs and have to either use VMware Server on a stripped out Linux, or Fusion in Mac OS.
Burke – thanks for commenting, I really appreciate that. I’ve been dying to know – but not dying enough to spend the $600 and then have yet another computer in the house that I don’t need.
Any updates to this? It’s been a few months, ESX(i) 3.5u4 just got released today, and has drastically better ICH9 and ICH10 support (I think the last Intel chipset mini used ICH9?) — can someone (please!) retest with ESXi 3.5u4?
I tried it yesterday with the newest release on a Mac Mini – early 2009 model. It boots from the CD and then gets stuck in the screen that has the yellow part in it. I really want to use this machine for VMware. Guess I’ll go for the Ubuntu 8 setup with VMware Server. Actually I’m don’t know what to decide. Installing Fusion running Leopard is also an option, I’m wondering what the best choice is.
I’ve tried it with ESXi 4.0 on my Mac Mini but the ESX build doesn’t have the proper NIC drivers for the Mini (nVidia NForce). Does anyone know how to inject the proper drivers into the boot disc? The lack of NIC drivers causes the install to halt. Other than that, ESX didn’t encounter any other issues.
Same here, Ryan. This is an improvement, unfortunately it makes the mini still unuseable for ESXi. I know (read) how to inject other drivers, but then again, we still need the drivers, don’t we…:-)
Hey Peter. Here is the link to the drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_nforce_1.23.html
Where’d you see the article on how to inject the drivers? I’d love to get this working. Currently, I have XenServer running on my Mac Mini and I hate it!
Hi Ryan,
The mini does not boot from the USB stick solution, so we need to modify the CD iso. It was hard finding the right way to do that, using standard stuff like Disk Utility simply doesn’t work.
I don’t know much about those drivers and how to compile the right version for the mini, but here’s how to put them on the CD:
- go to http://www.helios.de/news/news07/mkisofs.phtml#download and follow instructions there to get mkisofs for intel mac, and install it.
- mount the 4.0 installer CD image and copy all files to directory “CD” on your desktop
- copy an oem.tgz file containing the driver to the CD folder root
- modify isolinux.cfg to have oem.tgz included
(append vmkboot.gz — vmkernel.gz — sys.vgz — cim.vgz — ienviron.tgz — image.tgz — oem.tgz — install.tgz )
- in a terminal shell, change to the “CD” directory and :
mkisofs -o ../CD.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.catalog -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -J -R /Users/peter/Desktop/CD
(of course replace “peter” with your own home folder name )
You now have a bootable iso image with the patched driver.
I tried using the http://www.vm-help.com/forum/download/file.php?id=20&sid=cade0d5f1a45c6b7f2d5b20c286e7c96 oem.tgz file found at http://communities.vmware.com/thread/208224
but that crashed my Mac Mini when booting the installer.
So the only thing needed right now is the correct oem.tgz file for the nforce NIC in the Mini.
After the installation, we simply have to boot from an external disk and modify the oem.tgz archive in the Hypervisor1 partition, because the patch only modifies the installer. I found most of the instructions here: http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/customize_oem_tgz.php
There’s an explanation there on how to do the rest.
I would be really great to get the mini running, wouldn’t it?
Thanks for the info Peter!
I found this site with some compiled drivers for ESXi
http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/customize_oem_tgz.php which
Wonder if this would work? I’ll have to give it a shot!
Ryan
That’s the same pond i’ve been fishing in – with no luck so far.
Maybe you’re doing better then I did. Let me know how it went.
I’m interested too. I love Macs and Vmware. Wanting to throw some vms on a low-power network. Any progress?
No, nobody’s gotten it working yet.
ESX/i doesn’t work, but XenServer sure does, right out the box too and it’s FREE. I’m sure you have a specific reason to run VMware, but if you’re looking for one of the most ultra compact solution to run VM’s…check Citrix XenServer.
Great point. I personally need to run VMware for demos of VMotion and Storage VMotion, but other readers might find their needs met by Xen.
I wonder if the new mac mini server would run ESXi. If I can get my company to buy me one, I’ll let you know.
Definitely hoping someone cracks this nut some time soon…
I guess I’m another person in dying need of getting ESXi on a Mac Mini
Same here all … I have got a MAC Mini “Server” latest
model with 2x 500GB and would love to run
ESXi or VSphere 4.0 on it.
Setup starts but does not find any storage.
Did anyone find a solution?
Help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
To VITEX:
What about usb-flash? Do you see it in installer?
Any update yet? Would also like to run ESXi on a MacMini…
Thanks
Sorry, but if you don’t see a note here, it’s because there’s no update. If you’d like to go pick up one of the new unibody ones to see if it’ll run ESXi, I’m sure we’d all love to see the results!
Have just tried ESXi 4.0 Update 1 on the latest Mac Mini (mid 2010 model) and it fails due to an unsupported nic. But if anyone knows how to make ESXi run with a Broadcom BCM57765 nic….
Not sure how storage would go, as I’m having trouble getting ubuntu live cd’s to boot as well.
Ouch – that doesn’t sound good. Thanks for reporting it though!