Welcome to vm-help.com - home of the Unofficial VMware ESX Server Whitebox HCL. If you have any questions or comments, you can contact me on the VMware Technology Network community: VMTN Profile.

General

The Whitebox HCL is a list of servers, PCs, motherboards and storage controllers that are not officially supported for use with VMware ESX and ESXi, but have been found to function properly. If you have a system that you'd like to try that isn't on VMware HCL or the Whitebox HCL, you can check here to see if ESXi 3.5 will recognize your storage and network controller.

ESXi 3.5

Getting started with ESXi 3.5 Installable
1) What hardware will I need to install ESXi? - - coming soon
2) How do I know if ESXi will run on my hardware?
3) Install ESX on your host - watch an install Video
4) Download the VI client and configure your host - - coming soon
5) Create a VM - - coming soon

Other topics - coming soon
1) Backing up your host and virtual machines
2) Create a DMZ virtual switch and setup a DMZ firewall
3) Change your host's network name and SSL certificate

ESXi Install Options

Install ESXi 3.5 to an IDE drive
Extract the ESXi 3.5 install image to a USB flash drive
Install ESXi 3.5 from a PXE server
Watch an install video for ESXi

ESXi Tips and Tricks

Modify oem.tgz to add custom install files and hardware support
Enable SSH Access to ESXi
Restart the ESXi management agents from the console or SSH
Install ESXi 3.5 patches without VirtualCenter
Import the RCLI virtual appliance and then give the RCLI appliance a static IP address
Enable SSH access for the root login to the RCLI

ESXi Performance

Increasing datastore file transfer speeds with http transfers

ESX 3.5
Fixing the error "mounting root failed" when installing ESX 3.5 on a system with an unsupported SATA controller

VirtualCenter
Adding sysprep files to VirtualCenter