Original article: https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2022/01/nested-proxmox-vmware-installation-in-esxi/
When working with clients and different environments, you will certainly see many different hypervisors being used in enterprise organizations. While I recommend VMware vSphere for business-critical workloads, I have seen other hypervisors being used in some use cases. Proxmox is a very great open-source, free hypervisor available for use, even developed for enterprise applications. I also know many people in the community run Proxmox in their home lab environments. If you, like me, enjoy tinkering with technology, hypervisors, and other cool geeky stuff, I find myself loading many different solutions in the lab. Let’s take a look at the nested Proxmox VMware installation in ESXi and see how to easily spin up a Proxmox host in a vSphere VM.
Proxmox is easy to manage with a rich, fully-featured web interface that actually looks and feels quite good. While in my opinion, the look and feel of the vSphere client is not quite there, it is pretty nice and gets the job done for managing the Proxmox environment.
Proxmox VE is an open-source virtual machine management platform for enterprise virtualization. It provides many features necessary to run production workloads, including virtual machines, containers, software-defined storage, networking, clustering, and other out-of-the-box features. It is based on Linux, so you get a pure Linux experience with virtualization, containers, and more. Here are some benefits to note:
Open-source software No vendor lock-in Fast and easy installation Easy to use with an intuitive web management interface Low management costs, simple deployment Huge active community
Nesting Proxmox Installation in ESXi
The first thing to do when installing nested Proxmox in ESXi is to download the Proxmox ISO for installation. You can download the Proxmox ISO here:
Get the Proxmox VE ISO installer Current version Proxmox VE 7.1
You will mount the ISO to the virtual machine in VMware vSphere just like any other operating system installation. Create a new VMware vSphere virtual machine with the following details:
Guest OS Family – Linux Guest OS Version – Debian GNU/Linux 11 (64-bit)
Next, make sure to expose hardware-assisted virtualization to the guest operating system for the upcoming Proxmox installation. This is a simple checkbox in the CPU settings under the VMware ESXi virtual machine properties, as most of us are familiar with in nested ESXi labs.
After booting from the ISO, the Proxmox VE 7.1 installation begins. Choose to install Proxmox VE.
The first thing. Accept the EULA to continue.
Next, if you choose, you can customize the disk partition layout. However, for my nested Proxmox installation, I accepted the defaults.
Next comes setting your location and time zone configuration.
Configure a password for your root account. Additionally, Proxmox prompts you for an email address.
Configure the Proxmox hostname and your network configuration.
Finally, we arrive at the summary screen. Here, review the configuration and verify your settings. Then, click install.
The installation process begins.
Once the installation is complete, the Proxmox server will reboot. Here is the boot screen captured from the installation reboot.
Finally, we log in to the Proxmox Web GUI using root and the password configured during installation. Overall, the nested Proxmox VMware installation in ESXi is straightforward. If you want to tinker with Proxmox in a nested configuration, VMware vSphere provides a great way to use the basic features we have been using for quite some time in nested ESXi installations.
Proxmox is a cool hypervisor that offers many features in an open-source, free download. The latest Proxmox VE 7.1 version comes with many out-of-the-box features that can be used to run production workloads. If you want to play with Proxmox, running a hypervisor inside a nested VM in VMware ESXi is a great way to gain experience with installation, operation, troubleshooting, and other aspects of virtualization solutions.
You can learn more about Proxmox from their official page:
