ESXi 4.1 on a Mac Pro
I retired my Mac Pro (the Mac Pro 1,1, or the model from 2006. More info available at http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/stats/mac-pro-quad-2.66-specs.html), and decided to see how it would run ESXi.
A default install of ESXi 4.1 worked beautifully on the machine with no customization. It recognized both NICs, and saw the storage. A Mac Pro could make a decent server for someone for home or non-production use since it is fairly quiet and has 4 drive bays. I imagine the newer Mac Pros probably won't have the necessary driver support to run ESXi, but then again it'd be a strange choice of machine to run it.
There were a couple of annoyances, namely that you can't open and close the optical drive once the machine has booted into ESXi since it requires that you run Mac OS X (or Windows with the appropriate BootCamp drivers).
ESXi 4.1 + Optiplex 980 = FAIL
I tried installing ESXi on a stock SFF Optiplex 980 just to play, and the installer crashes halfway through. The error looks like it doesn't support the storage controller.
I'll have to play with it more later. I just wanted to see what would happen without doing any heavy thinking.
VMware ESX3i now free
VMware made ESX3i available for free today.
https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/login.php?eval=esxi&t=1
The hardware compatibility list is fairly limited for ESX3i compared to ESX 3. It appears however that the software will work on a variety of machines, but just won't be supported by VMware.
As an example, a Dell PowerEdge 1850 is on the HCL for ESX but not ESXi.
I tried testing the free version of ESX3i on a Dell Optiplex GX620 and it installed without issue. I was able to connect to the web interface running on the host, download the VI client, and manage the server that way. I copied a VM from my desktop to the test host using VMware Converter and was able to run it.
I then tried installing ESX3i on a PowerEdge 1850. During the boot process the keyboard stopped responding. For what it is worth, the keyboard was actually a PS2 Raritan KVM.
I later was able to get it to install while using a USB keyboard. After the installation was over the console refused to respond to the keyboard through the KVM.
So I'm not sure if the keyboard refused to work because ESX3i did not like the Raritan KVM, or if it does not like PS2 keyboards period. Perhaps this is why the 1850 did not make it to the HCL.
But it appears once it has been installed the 1850 works reasonably well as a host machine.
Those are my notes so far anyway...
Considering this product cost $495 retail last week and is now free it is definitely worth a look.