Minimum system requirements for installing ESXi/ESX

Minimum system requirements for installing ESXi/ESX 

ESXi 5.1

Supported server platformFor a list of supported platforms, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

64-bit Processor

• ESXi 5.1 will install and run only on servers with 64-bit x86 CPUs.
• ESXi 5.1 requires a host machine with at least two cores.
• ESXi 5.1 supports only LAHF and SAHF CPU instructions.
• ESXi 5.1 requires the NX/XD bit to be enabled for the CPU in the BIOS.
• ESXi 5.1 supports a broad range of x64 multicore processors. For a complete list of supported processors, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

RAM

• 2GB RAM minimum
• Provide at least 8GB of RAM to take full advantage of ESXi 5.1 features and run virtual machines in typical production environments.

Hardware Virtualization Support

• To support 64-bit virtual machines, support for hardware virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD RVI) must be enabled on x64 CPUs.
• To determine whether your server has 64-bit VMware support, download the CPU Identification Utility from vmware.com.

Network Adapters

• One or more Gigabit or 10Gb Ethernet controllers. For a list of supported network adapter models, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

SCSI Adapter, Fibre Channel Adapter or Internal RAID Controller

Any combination of one or more of the following controllers:

• Basic SCSI controllers. Adaptec Ultra-160 or Ultra-320, LSI Logic Fusion-MPT, or most NCR/Symbios SCSI.
• RAID controllers. Dell PERC (Adaptec RAID or LSI MegaRAID), HP Smart Array RAID, or IBM (Adaptec) ServeRAID controllers.

Installation and Storage

• SCSI disk or a local, non-network, RAID LUN with unpartitioned space for the virtual machines.
• For Serial ATA (SATA), a disk connected through supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers. SATA disks will be considered remote, not local. These disks will not be used as a scratch partition by default because they are seen as remote. Note: You cannot connect a SATA CD-ROM device to a virtual machine on an ESXi 5.1 host. To use the SATA CD-ROM device, you must use IDE emulation mode.
• Supported storage system:  ESXi 5.1 supports installing on and booting from these storage systems:
  • SATA disk drives. SATA disk drives connected behind supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers.
    • LSI1068E (LSISAS3442E)
    • LSI1068 (SAS 5)
    • IBM ServeRAID 8K SAS controller 
    • Smart Array P400/256 controller 
    • Dell PERC 5.0.1 controller

• SATA disk drives. Supported on-board SATA include:
  • Intel ICH9
  • NVIDIA MCP55
  • ServerWorks HT1000

Note: ESXi does not support using local, internal SATA drives on the host server to create VMFS datastores that are shared across multiple ESXi hosts.

• Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disk drives supported for installing ESXi 5.1 and for storing virtual machines on VMFS partitions.
• Dedicated SAN disk on Fibre Channel or iSCSI
• For a list of USB devices supported for installing ESXi 5.1, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.
• You can install and boot ESXi from an FCoE LUN using VMware software FCoE adapters and network adapters with FCoE offload capabilities. See the vSphere Storage documentation for information about installing and booting ESXi with software FCoE.
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