VMware ESX on VMware Fusion

The first things you will need to do when you are installing VMware ESX on VMware Fusion is verify that the CPU that you're running on has Intel VT extensions. Without VT extensions its possible that you can install ESX on Fusion, but the performance of the VM would be abysmal.

1. Install/License VMware Fusion
At the time of writing of this document the most recent release of VMware Fusion is 1.0.

2. Create a new VM to house the ESX installation

Create a new VM by selecting "New..."

Continue

Select the "Linux" option for operating system with a version of "Red Hat Linux"

Name the VM whatever you want, I named mine "ESX 3.0.2" here, and stored the VM in ~/Documents/Virtual Machines.

Assign the VM a disk size of 10.0 GiB

Click "finish" to finish the VM creation.

3. Make some minor adjustments to the VM, specify at least 512MiB of RAM and 2 vCPUs.

3. Now, quit VMware Fusion. After Fusion has exited, open a terminal ( Terminal.app is located under Applications->Utilities ), use your favorite text editor and manually edit the .vmx file for the VM that you created, add the following lines:

   scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
   ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
   ethernet0.connectionType = "bridged"
   monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = TRUE
   monitor_control.vt32 = TRUE

4. Power on the VM, if you get the following error message then VT is not enabled on your system. Double check that your processor has VT extensions. If it does use the patch at the following link to enable VT:

http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/690064-1892/vtfix.tgz

Once the VM starts booting, verify that your ESX VM is utilizing the Intel e1000 virtual NIC by hitting esc during the boot process, as seen below you should see an option to "Network boot from Intel E1000".

Now you're ready to install ESX on VMware Fusion!