Build up a VMWare ESXi environment on a desktop PC

People have been discussing on the topics of setting up ESXi environment on a desktop PC either at home or for testing purposes. Although I have been searching on the forums to get some ideas why my installation has always been failed, the last conclusion I got is buying an Intel e1000 compatible network adapter first. Even the cheapest Intel network adapter will do a good job for you. Trust me, you won't need anything else but this. As I have ever seen, most forum users may get stuck in compiling not-quite-compatible onboard chipset NIC driver for use under ESX environment. This is not their fault, indeed. VMware makes Intel network card as a must-have component in the VMWare infrastructure.

I finally figured out that the most up-to-date ESXi server (say, version 4.1) can actually recognize the problematic Realtek onboard NIC, however, ONLY AFTER you insert an Intel e1000 network card into the slot. The thing is that the ESXi installation will only succeed once it detects Intel network adapter (obviously not the onboard NIC), making the network adapter as default management console's network interface to the outside world. Some people would just simply tell us having more Intel network adapters in stock for ESX maintenance and support.

After several trials with different versions of installation disc on my HP desktop PC, I found out another trap on the so-called HP customized version of ESXi Installable Disc which actually includes a timer program causing a crash even after the installation is completed. You may probably see a crash screen with error message once your ESXi server keeps running for the first 10 minutes. So you'd better off NOT using any customized version of ESXi Installable Disc. Use the official Installation Disc found on VMWare official site, please.

Regarding the memory, I can't get much but enough for 4GB RAM which is almost good for running a resources-hungry Windows server and a slim Linux based NAT router VM appliance like pfsense. Pfsense has a nice web GUI for you to do configuration via HTTP/HTTPS protocol. The use of NAT router is to do some port forwarding and maximize the use of one single public IP address to the WAN. You may probably use it as a portal to your VMs inside ESXi environment.

Once the installation is done with the aforementioned hardware added to your desktop PC, you can use another computer to connect it via VSphere client. Rememeber to use the IP address assigned to vmnic1 which is for management console connection only.

The architecture is simple enough. Assuming you have one onboard NIC vmnic0 and one Intel network adapter vmnic1, you are going to use vnmic1 for ESXi management console and vmic0 for the router.

Supposing you have created one virtual switch (vSwitch0) for management console connection by VSphere client and another virtual switch (vSwitch1) for VM pool including NAT router and other VMs, then you are good to go.

Here is the big picture