VMware ESXi Basics: Installation, Your First VM, and Everyday Management Tasks

VMware ESXi is still one of the most common hypervisors you’ll run into in a real enterprise environment, and getting comfortable with the basics (installation, your first VM, and the handful of management tasks you’ll do constantly) doesn’t take nearly as long as people expect.

What you actually need before starting

• A physical server (or a spare machine for a home lab) with virtualization extensions enabled in the BIOS/UEFI (Intel VT-x or AMD-V). ESXi won’t install without this.
• At least 8 GB RAM for a genuinely usable lab (ESXi itself needs some, and you’ll want headroom for guest VMs). Production hosts obviously scale far beyond this.
• A USB drive (8 GB+) to create bootable installation media.
• The ESXi ISO from Broadcom/VMware. A free version is available for non-commercial/evaluation use directly from their site (registration required).

Installing ESXi

1. Write the ISO to your USB drive (Rufus on Windows, or dd on Linux/Mac) and boot the target machine from it.
2. Follow the installer prompts: accept the license, select the disk to install to (this will be wiped), and set a root password you’ll actually remember, since there’s no password reset flow built in without console access.
3. Reboot, remove the USB drive, and ESXi will boot to its console, a simple yellow-and-gray screen (the DCUI) showing the management IP address, assigned via DHCP by default.
4. From another machine on the same network, browse to https://<that-ip>. This opens the ESXi Host Client, a full web UI for managing the host without needing vCenter for a single-host setup.

Creating your first VM

1. In the Host Client, go to Virtual Machines → Create/Register VM.
2. Choose “Create a new virtual machine,” give it a name, and select the guest OS family/version (this affects default resource suggestions and some compatibility settings, so get it right even if you’re not sure of every detail).
3. Select the datastore (the local disk ESXi installed to, by default, unless you’ve added shared/networked storage).
4. Configure CPU, memory, and disk size for the VM. Start conservative, since you can increase most of these later without reinstalling anything.
5. Attach an ISO for the guest OS installer, either by uploading one to the datastore first or connecting to a datastore ISO you’ve already placed there.
6. Finish the wizard, power on the VM, and open its console from the Host Client to complete the guest OS installation exactly as you would on physical hardware.

Day-to-day management tasks you’ll actually use

• Snapshots: right-click a VM → Snapshots → Take Snapshot, before any risky change (a patch, a config change, an upgrade). Remember: snapshots are not backups, and leaving them running long-term degrades performance and can fill your datastore, so clean them up once you’ve confirmed a change is good.
• Resource monitoring: the Host Client’s built-in performance charts (CPU, memory, disk, network per-VM and host-wide) cover the majority of “is something starved for resources” questions without needing extra tooling.
• Datastore browser: Storage → your datastore → Datastore browser, for uploading ISOs, checking free space, or grabbing VM log files directly.
• VM console access: via the web console (built into the Host Client) for quick access, or the VMware Remote Console app for a more full-featured session.

The single-host limitation worth knowing early

Everything above works on a single ESXi host with no additional licensing. The features people usually associate with “real” VMware environments, such as vMotion (live migration between hosts with zero downtime), HA (automatic VM restart on another host if one fails), and DRS (automatic load balancing across hosts), all require vCenter Server managing multiple hosts together, which is a separate deployment and typically a separate licensing conversation. Don’t be surprised these options aren’t visible when managing a single standalone host directly.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need vCenter for a small environment?
Not strictly. A handful of standalone ESXi hosts, each managed individually through their own Host Client, is a completely valid setup for a small environment or lab. vCenter earns its keep once you have enough hosts/VMs that centralized management, vMotion, and HA start meaningfully saving time and improving resilience.

Is ESXi free to use in production?
The licensing landscape here has shifted multiple times in recent years (including the end of the standalone free ESXi hypervisor license for new downloads). Always check Broadcom/VMware’s current licensing terms directly before deploying in a production/commercial context, since what’s true for a home lab evaluation may not apply to commercial use.