Creating a Virtual Machine (Basic Settings)

This is one of the more basic tasks performed on ESX/ESXi. The wizard is very similar to workstation, server and fusion, however within the advanced settings they are very different. This will cover the initial basic part of creating a virtual machine on ESX. Though the process is the same if you did it via vCenter.

Connect to you ESX server or vCenter server using VI Client. Right click on the host and select "New Virtual Machine".

As this is just a standard virtual machine select "Typical" configuration. You will do this in most cases unless you need to change specific virtual hardware details, or a different OS to the usual list typically used that requires some tweaking. Click Next...

Give the virtual machine a name to identify it. This could be the hostname so it is easier to find. Click Next...

Select the VMFS datastore to store the virtual machine on. Click Next...

Choose the guest operating system. This can be from the standard more popular types such as windows, linux, solaris etc, however you can select other and continue. This does make a difference to the recommendation of memory settings in the next steps. Click Next...

Select the number of virtual processors. aka vCPU aka HEC (hardware execution context).

If the OS or the apps running on it are not muti processor aware then only select 1 CPU. Otherwise this will negativley affect other VMs. As processor slots and time allocated to this VM could be used by other waiting. Click Next...