[Update for quick links 1/30/2012]

To make linking to the other pages easier….

• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 1 (Research)
• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 2 (Installation)
• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 3 (Follow Up)
• OS X on a Mac Mini with VMware ESXi 5

Overview

From the numerous comments and questions from the Installation of the blog entry, we have decided to section up each question that we can reasonably answer.  Since we’re actually using these boxes on a daily use, we’re not as interested in making them dual boot or how we can make them into portable ESXi hosts when we want to.  If we get more equipment in the future, we’ll try those ideas out, but for the most part we just want it to work.

As for general stability, over a 15-20 day period, everything has been stable and running 24/7 and there have been no unexpected crashes, errors, or alarms appearing via the ESXi console.

Uptime (1/18/2012)

The question of uptime, came about from Timo.  From the two Mac Mini Servers that we have in use, here’s some screen shots.  As you can clearly see, one of the servers has had an uptime of 15 days already while the second one which was purchased a few days later after the theory was proved, has an uptime of 9 days.  (This is in reference to January 18, 2012)

Upgraded Memory (1/18/2012)

As for upgrading the memory, to fully make use of the advantages of this setup, 16 gb of most desired.  Here’s a screen shot of one of the Mac Mini ESXi hosts with 16 gb of memory and the VM utilization.

Network Card (1/18/2012)

The network card responded as Gigabit and Full Duplex.  We have not seen any slow file copies or VM migrations / copies from one Mac Mini to the other.

 Any thing else you would like to see?

Post some comments and questions and we’ll try our best to answer them as quickly as possible.

1) Open Internet Explorer

2) If your menu item isn’t showing.  Right click  on the top part next to the URL address and select Command Bar.

3) Underneath Safety or Tools.  Uncheck ActiveX Filtering

4) Restart your browser and now go to somewhere that has Flash and try it again.

Source: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/837/cpsid_83715.html#main_Installing Flash Player on Windows 7 (Internet Explorer)

[Update for quick links 3/15/2012]

ESXi 5.0 Update 1 has been released!!!!   Thanks eloscurosecreto for the heads up!

VMware ESXi 5.0 Installable Update 1 is now available (https://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/esxi50u1/dHRAYndkZSpidHclZQ=)

Release Notes:
https://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsp_esxi50_u1_rel_notes.html

[Update for quick links 1/30/2012]

To make linking to the other pages easier….

• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 1 (Research)
• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 2 (Installation)
• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 3 (Follow Up)
• OS X on a Mac Mini with VMware ESXi 5

• This then leads us to the user comments and Matt asked a question about Mac OS X running virtualized within ESXi 5 ontop of the Mac Mini 2011…

smcPresent variable

Ok, so as Matt pointed out regarding the smcPresent variable.  Based on this other blog that he so kindly referred to at Cloud-Buddy.  There is indeed the value and it is True.  So the next steps are to install OS X on the VMware ESXi 5 host and actually be able to obey the EULA that was set out.  For all those previous X-serve fans, rejoice we all now have a new solution.

The following is what you’ll see when going to: https://address-of-your-host/?moid=ha-host&doPath=hardware

1) Accept the self signed certificate, unless you’re super fancy and paid up for one or use an internal CA server.

2) You’ll see the login prompt.  If all else fails, use the root username and the password you assigned during installation

3) You’ll see the following and notice, smcPresent is now true instead of false as in the Cloud-Buddy blog.

Sources for Mac OS X Install on VMware ESXi

Here are the following sites used as reference to figuring out this whole mess.

• Tickett’s Blog – Mac OS X Lion on ESXi 5 –> This method was with Donk’s ESXi 5 Mac OS X Unlocker.  Which is actually not needed since smcPresent is true.  The commands were useful when testing a variety of DMG and ISO files and understanding what was going on the background.
• VMware OS X 10.7 –> VMware’s page on how to install OS X 10.7 in a virtual machine on ESXi 5 and VMware Fusion.  Though brief, it was somewhat helpful.
• VMware OS X 10.7 Lion (12/15/2011) –> This blog entry is important as it has support for 10.7 in this patch update.  This is the only link that we found related to this patch inforamtion.  **Beware** Before you patch your Mac Mini, make sure you have a copy of your NIC card driver somewhere.  You’ll see why later.
• VMware Patching –> How to patch ESXi though the commands are slightly out of date for ESXi 5.
• VMware Ethtool –> Utilizing the ethtool from the command line in order to determine that the NIC card driver was wrong.
• VMware ESXi 5.0 Driver CD for Broadcom NetXtreme I Gigabit Ethernet Driver – 3.120h.v50.2 –> Again, needed the driver post patching.

Initial Thoughts

This wasn’t as fun initially to get going as it would seem since you would think that because VMware wrote a brief document on how it works, that it’d work out of by the box immediately since it was sitting on Apple hardware.  The reality was that the brief VMware documentation and the scattered amounts of information everywhere on the internet was all fragmented due to the Unlocker program that’s been in use for Hackintosh.  Though it’s fantastic to see the Hackintosh people going at it, it’s just makes it a little bit harder to find the nuggets of information to get this going when things are not going to specification.

After all the struggle, in the end, this probably has become the single most versatile in home dev / SOHO box for multi-platform testing without having to sort through parts and put it together yourself and can always return the Mac Mini back to its original form if you ever wanted to resell it or pass it on to other non-techie family members.  So with that said, here’s how to get Mac OS X 10.7 running on VMware ESXi 5.

1. Materials Needed

• Mac OS X Lion (DMG or ISO) –> The first and foremost thing you need before you even start is Mac OS X Lion 10.7.0 or 10.7.1.  Based on the VMware compatibility link along with their current patching, they have dedicated that this patch only works with 10.7.0 and 10.7.1.  Also as a note, 10.6.x client is not supported if you read carefully.  Only 10.6.x Server is supported and since we only have access to 10.7 client and 10.7 server, we decided to use 10.7 client since we had a MacBook Pro laying around that started its life in the 10.5.x days and has been updated.  For those asking about 10.7.2, we tried it.  No dice currently (1/22/2012) until the next VMware patch with support.
• Mac Mini 2011 with ESXi 5 Installed –> See Part 2 regarding this if you don’t have one already.
• VMware Broadcom NetXtreme I Gigabit Ethernet Driver –> You’ll need this after patching VMware.
• VMware PatchESXi500-201112001 –> This patch includes the support for 10.7.0 and 10.7.1
• Mac Mini 2011 accessible –> Make sure your box is accessible with keyboard, mouse, and monitor because the NIC driver make cut out on you.

2. Patching VMware ESXi 5

• Download the VMware Patch ESXi500-201112001.zip (This is as of 1/22/2012)
• Upload the file to the VMware datastore through VI Client.
• Also highly recommended that you upload the Broadcom NIC driver to the datastore as well
• While you’re at it, upload your DMG or ISO file of Mac OS X Lion 10.7.0 or 10.7.1 if you want a faster install.

At this point, make sure you have physical access to the box.

• Shut down any VMs that are running on your box
• Enter Maintenance Mode

Initiate an SSH Session to the ESXi Host or use the ESXi Shell Access with a keyboard and monitor.
Run the following command to patch: esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore_location/ESXi500-201112001.zip

In the first section of red, you can see the command run.  The second block of red shows that the Broadcom TG3 NIC card driver being uninstalled by the patch update.  After exiting the SSH session, you can immediately see that the local system is unable to ping the remote system.  The driver has been updated and the system may not respond to pings.  Never fear as the driver can be updated again.

3. Patching the Broadcom NIC Driver again

So after all the effort the first time around, it wouldn’t be fun unless you had to do it again right?

• See Part 2 again and read up on the how to update the driver as we won’t try to rehash it here.
• If you’re at the ESXi Shell, and uploaded your file ahead of time, then you’re ahead of the game.  Good job!
• One key thing to remember is that if you’re trying to mount the CD again and you didn’t have your SuperDrive plugged into the system when it booted up, you’ll get an error when you try to mount the CD.  Keep the SuperDrive plugged into the USB port and then reboot your Mac Mini again.  Then try to access via the ESXi Shell and you’ll be able to mount and read the file again.

This is what the error will look like if you need to reboot your system with the SuperDrive plugged in first:VSHISHCmdSet():Set failed: Not supported

4. Getting Mac OS X Lion Installed

The current build level for ESXi will increase to: 515841. Next is to create a VM with the properties for a Mac OS X install.  *Tip* If you want a faster install, then upload the DMG or ISO file to the local datastore…. YES, the VMware product can read the DMG file though it does default to *.iso during the browse.  We did our install with DMG since it would be how the lazy people do it since converting it requires more effort.

Open VSphere Client and right click on the host you want to setup Mac OS X.  Select New Virtual Machine

Select Typical and click on Next

Provide a name for the machine.  Click on Next

Select a resource pool or the general host.  Click on Next

Select a datastore for the VM.  Click on Next

Select Apple Mac OS X 10.6 (64 bit).  Click on Next

You will see the VM Network, select the VM Network if you have a different VLAN for your VM.  Click on Next.

Specify the hard drive size and then click on Next

Summary at this point.  Click on Finish to create the VM shell.

After the VM is created, click on Edit Settings

Select on Memory. Recommendation is to use at least 2 gb of RAM.

Select the CD/DVD Drive.  Click on Database ISO File.
Check Connect at power on
Click on Browse

Select the InstallESD.dmg file that was previously uploaded to the datastore.   Click on OK

Click on the play button and boot up the VM.
Be patient.  It’ll take a while to boot.

Click inside the window. Select your language.  Click on the –> arrow.

Click on Disk Utility.  To format the drive first.

Select the VMware hard drive on the left panel.
Select Erase tab menu
Provide the drive a name if you like.  Click on Erase

Confirm that you want to erase the drive.  Click on Erase.

You will notice that on the left panel that the drive appears after the erase.

Click on the Disk Utility menu item and click on Quit Disk Utility

After quitting Disk Utility, it will take you back to the main menu again.
CLick on Reinstall Mac OS X

Mac OS X Lion logo appears.  Click on Continue.

Read through the agreement and click on Agree to continue

Click on Agree again after reading through the agreement.

Select the drive to install Mac OS X Lion on.  Click on Next

Installation works it way through

After copying all the files.  The installation continues.

The VM will reboot itself as you’ll see the Apple logo.

Choose your Country or Region.  Click on Continue.

Select the keyboard type that you are using.  Click on Continue.

Choose to transfer information if you have any.  For this test system, we chose not to.
Click on Continue

Enter in your Apple ID.  Click on Continue.

Enter in your registration information. Click on Continue.

Create your own local account.  Click on Continue

Once it’s done, you will see the Thank You page.  Click on Start Using Lion.

Log in now.
Mouse and keyboard response will still be fairly slow until VMware Tools is installed.

5. Installing VMWare Tools on Mac OS X

From the VM menu, go to Guest, and then Install/Upgrade VMware Tools

After seeing the pop up dialogue, click on OK

You will see the VMware Tools show up,  Double click on Install VMware Tools

Click on Continue to proceed with installation

Click on Continue button.

Select the drive where to have it installed.  Click on Continue

Click on Install

Enter in the password you setup during installation. Click on Install Software

Click on Continue Installation

The installation will proceed.

Installation will complete and then click on Restart

After restarting, you will notice that it shows that 10.7.2 as the direct update from 10.7.0.  Upgrading will cause the system to not boot anymore from our current testing.  Please let us know your comments from your tests.  So before you start, give it a VMware Snapshot and have some fun!

Here’s a quick list of the type of parts they offer as we know we’re not specialists like they are:

All Military Hardware: AN, NAS, MS, MIL-SPEC

• Bolts
• Bushings
• Clips
• Clinch-nuts
• Electronic Hardware
• Fittings
• Grommets
• Hi-loks
• Inserts
• Keys
• Knobs
• Lock / Hex Nuts
• O-Rings / Packing
• Pins / Springs
• Pins / Clevis
• Pins / Clotter
• Pins / Dowel
• Rivets
• Rive-Nuts
• Screws / Cap
• Screws / Machine
• Screws / Socket
• Switches
• Retaining Rings
• Terminals
• Wire
• Washers

Website: http://www.emanonaircraft.com

Phone: (323) 849-5947

Email: cheryl@emanonaircraft.com

Website: http://a-1allamericanroofing-wla.com/

Corporate Office: (562) 529-8100

Email: jfitch@800roofusa.com

1. WORMLY - https://www.wormly.com/tools

So Wormly Tools offers a variety of items to utilize an outside IP address in order to test your local systems.  The Test an SMTP Mail Server is a great feature we like to use for creating test messages.  You can use this to verify that your mail gateway is accepting messages for your domain and not an open relay.  Also you can troubleshoot to see if there is a problem or rejection within the mail deliver process.

2. CanYouSeeMe - http://www.canyouseeme.org/

CanYouSee me is a very straight forward tool.  This will check to see if any specific ports are open on the IP that you are logging into the site from.  So this works great when you are trying to determine if a firewall rule is working and the server is actually responding to the port opening.  It’s simple, clean, and accurate.

3. MXToolBox - http://mxtoolbox.com/

MXToolBox is probably one of the best websites full of tools for mail / SMTP troubleshooting.  You can enter in a domain, get the MX records, check them for Up or Down status and then check for Open Relays.  You can also create a free account to alert you when an MX record is down and back up.  Just link the alerts to an email address that is not related to your domain that you’re checking since it wouldn’t help you much if the alerts are going to the server that is down.

Comment below if you have any other sites that you like to use.

[Update for quick links 1/30/2012]

To make linking to the other pages easier….

• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 1 (Research)
• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 2 (Installation)
• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 3 (Follow Up)
• OS X on a Mac Mini with VMware ESXi 5

What we used:

• Mac Mini Mid 2011 5,3 – We picked this because mostly because of the Quad Core i7 which also has up to 8 threads. Note: After reading through most of the Apple documentation, the hard drives can be linked with software raid on Mac OS X, but software raid isn’t really an option for VMware ESXi.  We recommend a backup plan to be ready since one dead hard drive could be a really bad day if you get too dependent on these systems.
• Upgraded Memory – Though Apple says it maxes out at 8 gb.  We found that Corsair CMSO16GX3M2A1333C9 (2 x 8G) tested fine based on the Newegg comments.  We must warn those willing to go outside of the specifications Apple has set and say we’re not at fault if you lose your warranty! For this tutorial, we’re doing it with the stock 4 gb to show that it works.
• Apple Super Drive – Since the Mac Mini 2011 doesn’t come with an optical drive, we decided to get one as it’s handy.  You can choose to use a USB drive, but we didn’t want the hassle of trying to get it to install off USB as formatting 4 or 8 gb flash sticks is a pain to wait.
• USB Keyboard and Mouse – We are using standard Windows keyboard and 2 button mouse.
• DVI connection to monitor – Yes, you’ll need a monitor with DVI if you want to use the HDMI – DVI connector that the Mac Mini 2011 comes with.
• CD burner with a PC or Mac that is currently working in order to burn VMware ESXi 5 ISO (register at VMware for free) and a NIC driver disc.
• Network cable – You’re going to be happy when this works on the network, but in the mean time you’ll need it to verify it actually works.

 Step 1: Burn the VMware ESXi ISO to a CD

Here’s the link to the VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) download page.  The basics are: Click on Download, create / sign in to VMware, download the ISO, and burn to a CD.  If you need further assistance than this, you’ll probably in over your head with VMware basics.

Step 2: Download the updated Broadcom NIC Driver (VMware Site)

So, this is the elusive driver.  As many of you may notice the release dates of the Build 469512 and the Broadcom NetXtreme I Gigabit driver via VMware are nearly identical in August 2011, this updated driver for some reason just doesn’t make it into the standard ISO.  We must say, this was a true pain to find as we had to install VMware ESXi on the Mac Mini first, figure out the driver version, and then determine how to find an updated driver and patch it.  “ColinNg” and all those who found that the NIC driver wasn’t working, shouts out to you for throwing out the pointer and here’s the gift back to you guys.  Again, here’s the download link: VMware ESXi 5.0 Driver CD for Broadcom NetXtreme I Gigabit Ethernet Driver – 3.120h.v50.2.  From iFixIt, this driver also appears in the Mac Mini 2010 though it appears from the posts that there are keyboard and mouse issues which we can’t really help with.  The file download is small so it should download quick.

Step 3: Burn the Broadcom NIC Driver to a CD

Yes, we burned that Zip file to a CD as well since we’ll show you in the following instructions on how to mount it and use it.  Plus we have to make use of that SuperDrive we bought.  Some of you may know how to slipstream it, but we decided to just go it manually and are more than happy to link it to your blog with how to slipstream it into one smooth install process.

Step 4: Connect the SuperDrive to the Mac Mini 2011.  Start the installation.

Plug the SuperDrive into the Mac Mini.  Load the VMware ESXi installation CD into the SuperDrive.  This goes without saying, but you’ll also need the keyboard, mouse, network cable, monitor, and power plugged in as well.

Hold down the letter “C” on the keyboard while powering on the Mac Mini.  This will kick it to start booting from the SuperDrive.  You should see the VMware ESXi screen from the CD load up and then boot into the setup screens.

Step 5: Install VMware ESXi 5

So for those who just want to see how the installation works, we’ve detailed it with the camera to ensure this is real and how we did it.

Continuing from Step 4, the system will be loading the CD and you should see the following load screen

Next after the CD has been copied on the Mac Mini.  Then the VMware setup will start up.

The prompt to Welcome you to the ESXi 5.0.0 Installation will begin.  Hit the Enter key to continue

After reading the EULA and agreeing to it, click on <F11> to Continue

The drive selection will appear.  We selected the first drive in the array to install ESXi.  Hit the Enter key to continue

The system will ask you to confirm the drive selection.  Hit the Enter key to continue

Select the keyboard layout that works the best for you.  Hit the Enter key to continue.

Enter a root password.  Also confirm the password.  Hit Enter key to continue.

Confirm the installation as the disks will get repartitioned.  Hit the <F11> key to start the installation.  Note that this doesn’t mean you can’t go back and run the Lion recovery (it will still work).

The installation will start as you watch the progress bar

Once installation is complete, a screen will appear stating that a reboot is required to complete it.  Hit the Enter key to reboot the system.

Step 6: Configure Network and Test

The system has booted up at this point.  You should be able to see the VMware screen that informs you to hit <F2> in order to go into the configuration.

After hitting the <F2> key, a prompt for the root password will appear in order to access the configuration and run the network tests

On the menu screen that appears, you will want to select “Configure Management Network”

From here, you can click on “IP Configuration” in order to update it to a static IP or adjust the DHCP settings (We prefer static since it’s a test VM ecosystem, you are probably building a DC and DNS server in the VMs)

Here’s the screen as it appears by default but allows you to change from DHCP to static.  Hit the Enter key to confirm the entries.

Going back to the “System Customization” screen.  Click on the “Test Management Network“.  As you can see from the screen shot that the network ping tests fail on our test network.  Our goal here was to show you how it is not working and this is expected behavior.

Step 7: Enable ESXi Shell

After verifying that the network tests have failed, the next part is to enable the ESXi shell.  This will allow us to be able to update the NIC driver now.  Go to the “System Customization” screen again and select “Troubleshooting Options“.  Hit the Enter key on at least the first option Enable ESXi Shell.  After hitting enter the text should change to Disable ESXi Shell as seen in the screen shot.  That is how you know the ESXi Shell has been turned on.

In order to get to the actual shell.  On you keyboard, hit the ALT+F1 keys together.  You should be sent to the shell

Log in with the username: root and the password that you set during the installation.  You will be presented a command prompt after logging in.

Step 8: Update the Broadcom NIC driver

The following are the commands of how to mount the CD from the SuperDrive, copy the driver over to the local system, update the driver on the system, and then reboot.  Please follow these instructions carefully as they need to be done in a specific order for this to work properly.  As a reference, we got this information on how to mount a CD-ROM from virtuallyGhetto – VMWare Scripts & Resources.  Also, to find the instructions on how to update the driver, we pieced it together from another blog from Emulex: Installing or Updating Emulex Drivers on VMware ESXi 5.0

Load the VMkernel module: vmkload_mod iso9660
Mount the CD: vsish -e set /vmkModules/iso9660/mount $(esxcfg-mpath -b | grep “CD-ROM” | awk ‘{print $1}’)
Make a temp directory: mkdir /tmp-brcm-driver

Copy the TG3*.zip file to the temp directory: cp /vmfs/volumes/mpx.vmhba32\XXXXXXXX/TG3312~1.ZIP /tmp-brcm-driver

Change directories: cd /tmp-brcm-driver
Unzip the ZIP file: unzip TG3312~1.ZIP
List the directory contents: ls -al

Copy the offline_bundle zip to /var/log/vmware: cp tg3-3.120h.v50.2-offline_bundle-547149.zip /var/log/vmware
This above step is very important otherwise you will get an error when you try to execute the command to install the driver!!!
Perform the driver upgrade: esxcli software vib install –no-sig-check –maintenance-mode -d tg3-3.120.h.v50.2-offline-bundle-547149.zip

Reboot the system: reboot

Step 9: Verify Network Tests

After the system has been rebooted, you can now run the network tests and they should pass.  DNS might fail for the name of the host if you haven’t already entered the hostname into a local DNS server.  You can go back into the ESXi shell to test network connectivity.  Overall, we have tested this on two Mac Mini 2011 Quad-Core i7 servers.  Both of them work with this process.

Step 10: Next Steps

At this point, download VMware vSphere Client and start going to town.  We’d like to thank everyone for their contributions on the internet for this as we’d definitely like to do more write ups to help others as we get more time.

[Update for quick links 1/30/2012]

To make linking to the other pages easier….

• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 1 (Research)
• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 2 (Installation)
• The Mac Mini VMware ESXi 5 Server – Part 3 (Follow Up)
• OS X on a Mac Mini with VMware ESXi 5

For the technical details, skip to Part 2

1. Form Factor – Something small and able to hide without occupying an entire room for itself
2. Cost – Overall cost should be less than $1000 retail.  Otherwise it’s getting into the range of a good rack server.
3. Power Consumption – To be able to run this without killing a home’s power bill
4. Noise (DB Level) – The fan / cooling methods of the equipment shouldn’t be loud.  Even a standard desktop with a decent powered video card today can be fairly noisy with the fan spinning up to cool it.
5. VMware ESXi – Lastly, be able to run VMware ESXi

So here were the options that were initially thought of:

• Small rack servers
• Mac Mini Mid-2011 Model
• Custom small form factor with mini motherboard (basically a cube shape that you can find on Newegg)

After doing some quick research it was decided that:

• Small rack servers -loud, decent form factor, cost can range, power consumption is high, and definitely compatible with VMware ESX
• Custom cube type of PC – cost can be widely all over the place, have to build it together yourself for the most part, power consumption is way over 100 watts, usually running lower powered Core i3 chips which aren’t ideal for VMware VMs, and noise is unknown
• Mac Mini Server – Quad Core i7 processor with expandable memory to 8 or 16 gb of RAM, small form factor, almost fanless operation, cost was pretty much regulated by Apple, and very low power consumption with around 85 watts at the top end… the only problem… VMware ESX was not known to run on it.

So at this point the best plan was to figure out how to get a Mac Mini to work with VMware ESXi.  Our research started with searching all over Google and coming up with some opinions.  Thankfully we found some leads:

• Nigel’s Blog post regarding the use of Mac Mini with Hyper-V.  This blog was a great inspiration that the Mac Mini can be converted into a Hyper V server for virtualization.  This was also the unofficial backup plan in case the Mac Mini completely refused to cooperate with our efforts to get it to work with VMware ESXi 5.
• VMware Community Blog post regarding the exact sentiments on how to get ESXi 5 on a Mac Mini 2011.  So, we thought “Oh OK, someone maybe did figure this out…”  Sadly this post actually showed that it wasn’t working.  The poster “colinkng” did give some clues as to the Broadcom NIC driver was having some issues when booting up.  This was a very significant information that was posted by “colinkng” and we’d like to thank him for that tid-bit as it helped save us some time.
• Mac Rumors Blog post regarding how the Mac Mini wasn’t a supported device according to VMware ESX hardware compatibility.  Though this post was somewhat useful in their remarks, it didn’t exactly apply to the later versions of ESX which started supporting more generic hardware.
• Brent Ozar PLF‘s post regarding VMware ESXi 5 on a Mac Mini 2010.  He also tried on a Mac Mini 2011 which he got to the part about the keyboard and mouse possibly not working and then someone else also mentioned the NIC card having issues.  The comments I read also gave a lot of hope that this would work and would work really well though it looked like there were still some struggles ahead.  “colin ng” also posted here as well and gave more details about the Mac Mini 5,3 not working with the NIC driver and other users confirmed this as well.

From our research we did learn quite a bit of information and would like to thank all of those people for blogging and posting online about it since without everyone participating in the communities, none of this would be possible.  We learned the following from our research:

1. Most likely ESX will install on the Mac Mini 2011
2. The Broadcom NIC card might have some issues based on other tests and comments
3. Keyboard and Mouse might also have some issues
4. As a final fallback, there was always boot camping and going with Hyper-V.  This was completely undesirable since all our previous test VMs were in VMware and converting it takes time and effort and learning a new environment.

At this point, the next best thing was to go to the Apple Store and get one of these Mac Mini Servers.  As you can see from this whole write up, we did actually get it working and we will share the exact step by step information on how to get it to work.

There’s plenty of other companies out there doing this stuff and trying to grab a lot of news and attention, but if you want a company that has been around doing this since the original iPhone Apps were around, then these guys are it.

So here’s some links that we utilized and piece-meal together to perform what we needed to do:

• Transitioning your Active Directory to Windows Server 2008
• Transferring FSMO Roles
• How to Convert DNS Primary Server to Active Directory Integrated

Since each of these documents somewhat supplement each other we’ll only discuss the high level points here:

1. ADPrep – This is when you take the 2008 R2 install disc and put it into the 2003 server.  Then you run the series of ADPrep commands.
   1. If your 2003 server is 32 bit run ADPrep32.exe (obviously 32 means for 32 bit)
   2. If your 2003 server is 64 bit run ADPrep.exe
2. Make sure your DNS is working and AD integrated
   1. So review the Microsoft KB article ensuring that your DNS is AD integrated.  It’ll save you a lot of pain later on if it’s AD Integrated since you won’t actually have to do much to configure your DNS.
3. Setup the 2008 R2 server
   1. Join the 2008 R2 server to the domain
   2. Setup the DNS on the 2008 R2 server
   3. At this point, we left the server alone for like 1 day while we were working on other things and let the DNS propagate through the AD Integrated feature
4. Verify the DNS works
   1. So if DNS works and it’s replicated, then if you desire you can start migrating DHCP, static IPs to the new 2008 R2 server.
5. DCPromo the 2008 R2 Server
   1. At this point, we also let the server sit to ensure they are replicating
   2. Verify through the Event Viewer that replication is working properly
   3. Note: You may have to raise the forest / domain level functionality to at least 2000 or 2003 and not mixed mode
6. Now transfer the FSMO roles
   1. Perform the transfers by following the instructions from the links above (no point in re-inventing the wheel)
7. At your own discretion DCPromo the 2003 server and remove it from the environment
   1. Highly recommend performing a shutdown of the 2003 server over the weekend or down time to verify that logins are working to the 2008 R2 server
   2. Once verified that DNS and logins continue to work, then kill the 2003 server

So there you go, there are the basic high level steps that we did to transfer from 2003 to a 2008 R2 server.  Obviously it’ll be more complex to deal with additional servers that are in the environment, but to do one server for a small environment, it was pretty simple.