Is it possible to run X on a ESX Service Console

graphical-user-interfacevmware-esxx11

Ok, we all know (or should know) the ESX Service Console isn't actually a Linux system, but a custom Linux distribution running inside the ESX hypervisor, in order to allow its management.

Yet, regardless of that, questions arise: if one were to install all of the required programs (X11, Gnome/KDE, etc.), would the Service Console actually be able to run a graphical environment? Or would it be unable to access the server's graphic hardware due to the underlying hypervisor?

I'm not saying this would be a good idea; and I'm quite confident it's not even possible. But today I was discussing the issue with a friend… a friend which, BTW, thinks ESX is only some kind of program running on a Linux system, and the VMKernel is some sort of Linux kernel module. An all-too-common mistake.

Anyway, would X be able to run in the Service Console?
Did anyone ever actually manage to make it run?

Best Answer

In the full ESX (not ESXi) it's probably possible, but why would you want to? The hypervisor should be as thin as possible (this is the concept behind ESXi), and adding a fat GUI that will suck up RAM and CPU doesn't make much sense...

Also, Re: the service console -- My understanding is that the non-i version of ESX is actually a Linux system (fully-fledged installed Linux distro) with an in-kernel hypervisor and hypervisor daemons. You can kill off the ESX daemons and treat it just like a regular linux box, though it's pretty striped down.

This is why there is no "service console" in the ESXi family -- If it were simply a built-in VM with special access privileges there would be no reason to deprecate it :-)

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