Did you know with the release of vSphere 5.1 and vCloud Director 5.1, there are now APIs that allow you to enable/disable Nested Virtualization aka (Virtual Hardware Virtualization) on a Virtual Machine? Disclaimer: Nested Virtualization is not officially supported by VMware. In the vSphere 5.1 API, there are two new properties related to Nested Virtualization: […]
Having Difficulties Enabling Nested ESXi in vSphere 5.1?
I noticed there were a few folks having some difficulties enabling Nested ESXi (VHV Virtual Hardware Virtualization) in the latest release of ESXi 5.1 and I thought I share some additional info and tips on troubleshooting your setup in case you are running into similar problems. *** DISCLAIMER **** This is not officially supported by […]
Nested ESXi 5.1 Supports VMXNET3 Network Adapter Type
I noticed something interesting while extracting the contents of ESXi 5.1 ISO for some kickstart configurations …. Do you see it? It’s a VMXNET3 driver for the VMkernel! I also confirmed by running the following ESXCLI command querying for the VMkernel module “vmxnet3”: # esxcli system module get -m vmxnet3 Module: vmxnet3 Module File: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmxnet3 […]
How to Enable Nested ESXi & Other Hypervisors in vCloud Director 5.1
The process to enable “Nested Virtualization” in the latest release of vCloud Director 5.1 and create your own virtual lab similar to VMware’s vSEL (Virtual Sales Enablement Cloud) is very similar to the previous steps outlined for vCloud Director 1.5 release. The only change is how VHV (Virtual Hardware-Assisted Virtualization) aka “Nested Virtualization” is enabled […]
How to Enable Nested ESXi & Other Hypervisors in vSphere 5.1
There are a ton of new features with the latest release of vSphere 5.1, but the one “unsupported” feature I always test first is “Nested Virtualization” (aka Nested ESXi) and with the latest release, it seems to have gotten even better. You will still need to have the same physical CPU prerequisites as you did […]