ESXi 5 installation on Oracle VirtualBox

It's been possible to test ESX installation on VMware Workstation for some time, but there is an alternative solution now. ESXi 5 can be installed on Oracle VirtualBox https://www.virtualbox.org/ providing the right VM settings are chosen.

There is a caveat though. Only 32-bit guest OS can be hosted even on 64-bit hardware. During installation you are warned that 'Hardware Virtualization' is not ON despite this option being enabled in BIOS.

ESXi 5 requires at least 2 virtual processors, IO APIC option and 2048 MB of memory, SATA storage controller and one of Intel network adapters.

If SCSI of SAS controller is chosen, you might get an error message like the one below

or no storage device will be shown.

If you get all the setting right, installation process should finish with the following message.

Now when installation is finished you can connect to your new ESXi host and start playing with enterprise class virtualization technology.

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