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VMWare ESX 3.5u3 in Fusion

I’ve recently been working on a project and needed quick access to a ESX server for reference. I happen to use Macbook Pro and run VMWare’s Fusion product to manage my Ubuntu Linux and Windows desktops. I figured why not try to run ESX as well. Below are the extra variables I added to make ESX run stable inside Fusion.

Hardware: MacBook Pro 2.4ghz (code 2 duo), 4GB ram (early 2008 model)
VMWare Fusion: 2.0.1
VMWare ESX: 3.5U3

I needed to add the following variables to my .vmx file in order to successfully boot and install ESX inside Fusion. I’ve noticed some people are suggesting using 2 cpu’s instead of one however I found this caused serve slowness and ESX will run just fine with 1 CPU.

monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = TRUE
monitor_control.vt32 = TRUE
numvcpus = "1"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.connectionType = "bridged"