From: http://jgiffard.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/windows-server-2012-on-esxi-4-1/
My I.T infrastructure at home has 4 ESXi 4.1 servers which host a number of VMs that are used for home and work purposes. However, my organically grown infrastructure has now reached the point where it needs re-organising. As part of that I’m installing new A/D controllers and decided to use Server 2012.
And then found that ESXi 4.1 doesn’t support it. Try it and you’ll get the Server 2012 sad face appearing. I don’t have time just now to update to ESX5.X on my servers, so I hunted around the Internet to see if there was a workaround.
I found these set of instructions ( really don’t do this for a production environment )
- Create a new VM over the vSphere Client.
- As “Guest Operating System” use Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)”
- After VM has been created but before first power on, download the following bios file and upload it to your ESXi datastore into the folder of the VM
- Now open the .vmx file of the new VM and add the follwing lines
bios440.filename = "bios.440.rom" mce.enable = TRUE cpuid.hypervisor.v0 = FALSE vmGenCounter.enable = FALSE
- Power on VM and Server 2012 will install and run