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To make a long story short, my OS drive is a 512GB Samsung Pro SSD. I've got it split, so Windows 7 has half, and Linux has the other half. When I boot my machine up, I can choose which OS to load via grub.

I've got a hunch that this won't work, but I don't suppose some wizard knows of a way for me to safely nuke the Linux partition, install ESXi in its place, without hosing up my existing Windows 7 partition? I alternate between both OSes, depending on what I need to do, but I really don't feel like breaking Windows.

Worst case, I can just wait until I build that threadripper based workstation (although a good friend recommended I use Arch Linux and install Workstation Pro, instead of ESXi. Not sure why....).

Sounds like it is possible but not easy; you need to install ESXi first (so you would need to re-do the Windows install as well). Most people seem to recommend installing ESXi to a second drive or USB stick if you want to dual-boot it. More info here: https://serverfault.com/questions/61019 ... st-machine

What is it that you are trying to do that makes running ESXi better than the dual-boot configuration you have now?

Do you have free space on another drive for the windows install? I would clone an image of the Windows partitions to somewhere else for the short-term. Clonezilla or Macrium would handle that kind of partition set-up for sure, if you prefer other cloning tools, they probably would too but I don't have much experience outside those two.

Wipe the original Samsung SSD and repartition half of the drive for your ESXi install, job done, then put Windows back onto it - though you may have to readjust/repair the Windows boot files using bootrec.exe which you can either get off the Windows install ISO or just grab from the net and flashboot to it off a Rufus'd USB.

just brew it! wrote:

Sounds like it is possible but not easy; you need to install ESXi first (so you would need to re-do the Windows install as well). Most people seem to recommend installing ESXi to a second drive or USB stick if you want to dual-boot it. More info here: https://serverfault.com/questions/61019 ... st-machine

What is it that you are trying to do that makes running ESXi better than the dual-boot configuration you have now?

I've actually got vSphere, vCenter, Horizon, NSX, etc... I, er..., know the right back alley of the internet to find stuff.

My thinking behind using ESXI, et al, with the threadripper workstation, was that with my current setup, I end up using Qemu/KVM VMs more than I do other VMs. Some vendors have been switching to just providing ESXi versions, so between that, and wanting to run other VMs simultaneously, like Win2K12/2K16 VMs, Openstack nodes, vMX, vQFX-10K, NX-OSv 9000 and IOS-XRv 9000 and NSX (I really want to replicate a good data center setup, as well as a kickass ISP setup), I didn't want to limit myself to just using Qemu. A good friend of mine, who I consider my network guru (dude has forgotten more than I've learned in 12 years in the business) has been suggesting I use Arch Linux instead. I've got a book on building an Arch environment, but like the Docker/Kubernetes books, it's kinda going over my head. I installed a Manjaro VM in Workstation Pro in Windows yesterday, but I'm not after a desktop environment. If I could afford it, I'd get a 2P Epyc server with 512GB RAM, but at $4200 a chip (and even the 128GB RAM for the threadripper build costs more than the CPU), it's just out of my price range.

Before I started using Ubuntu (well, Linux Mint, really) about 4 years ago, I hadn't touched Linux in well over a decade (and that was Slackware). It was at a failed startup, where we were trying to build very low cost versions of the +$10,000 Blusocket gateway controllers (long before Adtran bought them). We got close, but the only SBCs in our price range were woefully underpowered. I'm pretty comfy with Ubuntu, but Arch is a little out of my league, until I can get a test build set up in Workstation first.

I didn't know I could boot ESXi off a USB drive, though. Think my 32GB thumbdrive would be sufficient?

Doctor Venture wrote:

I didn't know I could boot ESXi off a USB drive, though. Think my 32GB thumbdrive would be sufficient?

No clue, as I've never done it myself. It just seems to be what some people who have done stuff like this seem to be recommending.