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As you may know, hypervisors type 1 are called bare metal, and are intimate to the hardware. Hypervisors type 2 may be installed over an operating system, to run virtual machines ( like VMware workstation ). The problem is that I already run a Windows 7 in my physical machine, with dozens of software installed and I don’t want to lose them by formatting...

I run Vmware with some virtual machines, but as you know, if the OS fail, I would lose all of them, so, there’s only a solution: Installing a hypervisor type 1 over the hardware ( bare metal ), and then, installing everything again, so, if my Win7 got a problem, it will not cause problems on the other virtual machines. I would like to know if there’s a way to install the type 1 without uninstalling my whole windows or formatting the physical machine.

There’s many hypervisors. I was thinking about ESXi, what do you think ? The problem with ESXi is that ( may be ) I would need an external laptop to control it. I know that windows server 2012 has an Hyper V bare metal, but Win7 has nothing ( only Win8 has ). So, do I need to format my machine and install everything again, or at least can I make a copy of the complete OS and import afterwards as a new virtual machine to the new system ?

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  • You can boot to type 1 vms; Yes; You realize that esxi is an os, right? You should be able to dual-boot Windows and esxi but esxi isn't free. While it's built on Linux the VMware specific code isn't
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 3:57
  • You can mount VHD files within Windows 7 and boot to them. serverfault.com/questions/221516/…
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 4:01
  • serverfault.com/questions/610191/… Be sure you do research before you go installing esxi on your hdd. It won't be easy to do what's described, esxi wasn't designed to be installed alongside another is, it can be because it's still just a Linux kernel
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 4:05

4 Answers 4

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A Type 1 Hypervisor is installed directly onto a bare metal server. A Type 2 Hypervisor is installed onto/over an OS. You are talking about two completely different things as if they where somehow the same.

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  • Before you do anything make sure your hardware is compatible with your intended Hypervisor.
    – dpaloff
    Commented Apr 26, 2017 at 19:30
  • Take a look at How to write a good answer
    – yass
    Commented Apr 26, 2017 at 19:56
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It's been awhile, but AFAIK VMWare ESXi will overwrite your currently installed operating system when it's installed.

Can I install hypervisor type 1 after installing OS?

Not unless you want to lose the originally installed OS.

can I make a copy of the complete OS and import afterwards as a new virtual machine to the new system ?

VMWare has "Physical-to-Virtual" (P2V) utilities that will take a current OS install and convert it to a VM. However ESXi must be already running if you want to basically "import" the physical machine into a running ESXi, but you should look as there may be a way to P2V to a .vmdk file and then later use the .vmdk as the virtual disk for a VM.

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Just to throw it out there, you could probably get away with a disk-clone using tools like clone-zilla.

By taking a snapshot of your drive, you can install a VM on Windows and test the clone worked, then install ESXi and mount the snapshot as a virtual disk.

Alternatively, since ESXi is a Linux-based OS, you can treat drives like regular files. So if my understanding is correct here, (which it may not be), you can install ESXi on a separate disk and create a new VM from a virtual disk - which is actually a real disk.

This at least works in QEMU, so I presume something like this works in VMWare, but I haven't tested it.

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Make sure your processor supports VT-x

  1. Install a Type 2 Hypervisor like Virtualbox on your Windows machine.
  2. Install your Type 1 Hypervisor like ESXi on a VM inside Virtualbox. Make sure to give it plenty of space for VM storage.
  3. Use either your Windows 7 browser or a web browser of another machine on your network to access the ESXi web interface. There you can create virtual machines to your heart's content.
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    Hello, @Patrick I don´t know if I didn´t understand you, or you didn´t understand me. With your configuration, if I install Virtualbox on the windows machine, if the windows crash, all virtualbox machines would crash also, no ? I need a system which hypervisor is not attached to OS, so, if the OS crash, the other VM would not crash.
    – Dihelson Mendonça
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 2:30
  • It seems I did miss that part. My suggestion would be to dual-boot. Create a partition on your Windows machine that will free up some space, burn the ESXi image to a CD or USB, then boot from that to install ESXi to the new partition and proceed as normal. After the installation you will have the choice of booting into ESXi or WIndows 7. This will let you run ESXi without touching your Windows install.
    – Patrick
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 2:33
  • @ Patrick that´s interesting, making a dual boot would work, but I need to ask you a silly question: Can I use all boots "at the same time" and kind of change interface from windows to the machines on the ESXi ? That´s strange for me. I know that if I install ESXi and boot from it, all systems would be running in parallel and if one crash, the others would not suffer. ??
    – Dihelson Mendonça
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 2:40
  • No, I don't think so. You would have to boot into one or the other. The only way I could see running ESXi and Windows "at the same time" would be to have them on separate machines. The way I proposed, you would have to shut down Windows and boot into ESXi, or vice versa.
    – Patrick
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 3:15
  • Now it makes sense. Thanks for the insights @Patrick. Something strange happening here...every new post from mine, someone comes and votes -1, very odd :)
    – Dihelson Mendonça
    Commented Jan 14, 2017 at 6:02

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