This article is to prepare nested ESXi (virtual ESXi) on physical ESXi server. This is useful for doing small POC or creating 2 node vSAN cluster witness node.

• Step 1. Create trunk portgroup as vesxi-trunk-portgroup in ESXi where you want to deploy vESXi

• Step 2. Create a new VM

  • CPU = 4
  • Memory = 8 GB
  • Disk = 12 GB to install ESXi + 4 GB Cache disk + 8 GB Capacity disk
  • Edit VM settings for CPU to enabled Hardware Virtualization

• Step 3. Power on and install ESXi similar to physical ESXi server.

• Step 4. Configure ESXi for network and hostname

Make sure to give your ESXi vLAN. This is similar to your other physical hosts configuration.

• Step 5. after installation of ESXi add beow 2 paramters in advance

  • scsi0:1.virtualSSD = true
  • scsi0:2.virtualSSD = true

• Step 6. Reboot the nested ESXi VM.