1

Can I run ESXi on EC2?

If so, any suggestion how to do that.

I would like to launch an ESXi machine and host routing VNFs in it on AWS.

6
  • 1
    AFAIK nested virtualization is not supported but you can get bare metal instances that do support running your own hypervisors, preconfigured with vmware: aws.amazon.com/vmware or install your own hypervisor on a 3.metal : aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/i3
    – HBruijn
    Apr 25, 2019 at 11:35
  • @HBruijn Which Amazon Machine Image (AMI) I should choose before selecting i3.large while creating EC2 instance? Apr 25, 2019 at 11:52
  • 2
    You will probably need to create your own AMI with ESXi as I don't expect Amazon to support and provide any - docs.aws.amazon.com/vm-import/latest/userguide/…
    – HBruijn
    Apr 25, 2019 at 11:58
  • @HBruijn that looks very complicated to do. Right now I don't have any ESXi environment from where I can export my AMI image. I thought I would somehow install it from an ESXi image ISO, and that's it. Apr 25, 2019 at 12:09
  • What are you trying to achieve with this? Most organisations are going away from ESXi towards cloud provided virtualization.
    – Tim
    Apr 25, 2019 at 19:16

1 Answer 1

4

VMware Cloud on AWS. A pretty big commitment as the minimum cluster size is several hosts and the pricing is "talk to VMware sales".

In theory, you could install ESXi yourself on one of the bare metal instances. Tricky, there is no boot from ISO image, and I don't know what the VM importer would do with an ESXi image.

5
  • Well, speaking of installing an ESXi by myself, I'm looking for a way in which I can export an OVF Template, then import it on AWS. Apr 26, 2019 at 8:52
  • What have you attempted to get ESXi onto your own AMI? There is very little information about this, as I don't think either AWS or VMware intended to support do it yourself. I'd expect you to have to install ESXi locally, image that disk, then transplant it into some other AMI. Apr 26, 2019 at 12:00
  • I have tried to import an OVA image of ESXi which I deployed in my machine. I followed step by step in the given documentation [docs.aws.amazon.com/vm-import/latest/userguide/…. I got the following: "StatusMessage": "ClientError: EFI partition detected. UEFI booting is not supported in EC2.", Apr 26, 2019 at 15:37
  • 1
    Talk to your network team and/or VMware and see what networking(?) solutions fit your actual problem. I doubt ESXi is required, also installing it via undocumented procedures is going to be painful and unsupported. Jun 15, 2019 at 17:38
  • 1
    already did. I got VMware Cloud on AWS - Amazon Web Services, and it is 100% meet my needs. Jun 17, 2019 at 17:20

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .