Comments on: The VMware ESXi 4 64MB Hypervisor Challenge

By: juan

juan — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:21:38 +0000

Hello

Here is another way to do it:
I use the fantastic boot loader grub4dos and boot ESXi with this entry:

title Vmware ESXi4
find –set-root /grldr
kernel /ESX4/vmkboot.gz
module /ESX4/vmk.gz
module /ESX4/sys.vgz
module /ESX4/cim.vgz
module /ESX4/oem.tgz
module /ESX4/license.tgz
module /ESX4/mod.tgz

It boot from a pendrive with NTFS filesystem.
You only need to install grub4dos on the pendrive
and take these files from the ESXi dd image.
This way you can boot ESXi, Windows, Linux, etc. from ONE pendrive.
Greetings!

By: Eric Gray

Eric Gray — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:09:59 +0000

Patrick,

Please keep in mind that this is just a proof-of-concept and not intended for real-world use. The point was to demonstrate that ESXi is very small despite the “huge” 1GB flash requirement. Given the difficulty in even finding a sub-1GB USB flash device these days, there is not much value in getting it to run on 64MB.

When I put together the prototype, I stopped when I hit on a repeatable formula that works. I’m sure there are ways to optimize, feel free to tinker around and post your findings if you come up with a cool solution.

Thanks for reading VCritical.

Eric

By: patrick

patrick — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:09:39 +0000

can it use the same way to copy the file to sd*4?
mount -o loop,offset=$((32*512)) VMware-VMvisor-big-175625-x86_64.dd tmp/

By: patrick

patrick — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:01:10 +0000

the sd*4 seems large the 1.5M and the data inside it seems less than 512K?
dd if=VMware-VMvisor-big-175625-x86_64.dd of=esxi-boot-part skip=32 count=3000 should not contain all the sd*4? It is work?
if the data is less than 500K, can I use dd if=VMware-VMvisor-big-175625-x86_64.dd of=esxi-boot-part skip=32 count=1000 ?
has you test the VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.0.0.Update01-208167.x86_64.iso, is it can store in a 64M disk?

By: Eric Gray

Eric Gray — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:00:49 +0000

Patrick, you could use a 1GB USB as an intermediate source as you suggest. That’s initially how I approached this, but figured it would be easier to not require two different USB sticks.

Eric

By: patrick

patrick — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:09:54 +0000

can it install on a usb flash, then use dd to backup the sda4 and sda5,

and then use this 2 patition backup file to restore to a 64MB flash with your fdisk script?

By: VAroon

VAroon — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:02:59 +0000

Can this work on a normal laptop for testing purposes.But with no CPU AMD-V

By: Mark Richards

Mark Richards — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:40:47 +0000

I understand it’s meant as a demo but a demo that doesn’t really work isn’t nearly as impressive as one that doe. In my case I have lots of 256 MB USB keys I’d like to give to people to get them to try esxi- but it’s a lot less useful if the config doesn’t get saved.

I’m not really sure why it wouldn’t save the config- everything is definitely there- esxi boots- vm’s run- etc. It just seems like the memory filesystem isn’t being written out to disk.

I actually had a 256MB key so I went a little further with my test: I set up a partition for VMWare tools and installed those to the key (I left out Vsphere client as I can download and install the latest version from vmware’s site easily enough and at 111MB it would have taken up too much room). The tools worked fine and let me install to the vm’s I tested.

I’d still like to figure out the save issue if anyone has any ideas.

By: Kevin Brooksby

Kevin Brooksby — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:08:27 +0000

Nice work Eric. Great post. Used this method (a la a bit modified to extract the VMware-VMvisor.dd.bz2 on a Linux box) and I also used a 128 MB flash stick I had laying around. I must admit this is very cool to prove the core thin hypervisor is indeed a very small footprint and I appreciate your explanations in your two-part articles explaining the use of the other partitions. Doesn’t seem to load as quick (but this may be because it is a 1.x USB device and not 2.x complaint like most of my 1-2 GB ESXi usb sticks I test with) but all functionality is there minus of course tools/vSphere client (web interface give a cute blank page as I assume it is missing tomcat portlet)/etc. Booted up a xppro VM that I recently installed the openssh for windows package on for test I was doing for a friend (I know it seems so bastardized) and yanked the 128MB ESXi u1 stick and to my immediate surprise my ssh session into that xppro box stayed running as did the VM. Must have been because the ESXi hypervisor is loaded into memory. Powered off my laptop running ESXi that joins my two way cluster and approx 45 seconds later HA fired the VM back up on esx2 node. Very cool indeed! Also noted the settings do not stick but that is no surprise with this stripped/slim ESXi install.

Keep up the good work!

By: Eric Gray

Eric Gray — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:29:43 +0000

This is an exercise to show that the core functionality of ESXi is fully contained in 64MB and not 1GB as some have claimed.