Alex's Tips!
For each nested ESXi, create a new port group with “Promiscuous mode” and “Forged transmits” enabled, otherwise networking doesn’t work for guests within the nested ESXi's.

Use one “VMWare vSphere 6 for Platinum Edition with VMware AppDefence Plugin for 1 processor” license for *each* ESXi, then my “VMWare vCenter Server 6 Standard” license for the vCenter.

This lab running on ESXi evaluation software (which lasts for 60 days - but has all features enabled) should allow you to test and gather experience on vCentre, HA, DRS etc.

Note: Fault Tolerance will not work on a virtual machine running on a virtual ESXi server (and of course virtual ESXi servers are NOT supported!)

• 1 x ESXi compatiable Server (install ESXi on this server)
• 1 x PC (for WMware vSphere Client install)
• 1 x switch

• Windows 2008 R2 Domain Controller & DNS server & iSCSI server
  • VMware profile
    • 1 x vCPU
    • 3 GB RAM
    • C Drive 10 GB thin Provisioned
    • D Drive 20 Gb thick Provisioned (reserved for iSCSI)
• Windows 2008 R2 vCentre Server
  • VMware profile
    • 1 x vCPU (not min specs state 2 CPU required, but not for a lab)
    • 3 GB RAM
    • C Drive 20 GB thin Provisioned
• 2 x ESXi Vmware Machine
  • VMware profile
    • 2 x vCPU
    • 2 GB RAM
    • 4 GB thin Provisioned Disk

Windows 2008 R2 Domain Controller VM
vCentre and features such as vMotion are highly reliant on a DNS server. If you do not use a domain controller and DNS server, you neeed to enter server host names and IP addresses into vCentre server, & vSphere Client PC host files)

Make your Windows 2008 R2 Domain Controller a iSCSI target
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=19867
Upload Windows XP ISO to this datastore

vCentre Server VM
Install vCentre
Install vCentre Guided Consolidation
Install vSphere Client (or run from you client PC)
Install vCenter Converter

ESXi Virtual Hosts VMs Add these ESXi Servers to your vCentre.

Configure a DNS name for each of the virtual ESXi servers and configure this as the hostnames when you install (configrued on the console).

Install 2 Windows XP Virtual machines (VMs) (or some other light OS) on one of the Virtual ESXi Server.

• XP VMWare Profile
  • 1 x vCPU
  • 256 MB RAM
  • 4 GB thin Provisioned disk (iSCSI datastore)

Note: By default you will not be able to install / run a Virtual Machine on a Virtual ESXi Server.
Use below URl to see how you can enable thisconfig to allow this to occur.
http://www.r71.nl/kb/technical/320-running-nested-vms-on-virtualized-esxi-4-or-5

You should use the iSCSI as the Datastore for the Virtual XP machines, as this will allow you to test vMotion, DRS and HA. Note Fault Tolerance will NOT work, as the CPU come up as unsupported (even if teh physcial CPU is supported for Fault Tolerance)