INSTALLING CUCM PUB and SUB, and CUC on VMware ESXi 5:

TIPS:
Here's a list of my trials and errors, this should save the next guy many hours of
frustration So I finally obtained my UC 8.6 install CD. The first thing I did was boot up my
ACER ASPIRE x1200 with 3gb ram, 500gb hd, AMD 64 processor. (I have a 16gb HP
Workstation, but it is my main computer with Windows 7 etc so I wanted to first try
it out on my lab computer.)
1. Booted the ACER into its OS which is Ubuntu 12.04, then created a VM in
Virtualbox and loaded the ISO. No output at all, wouldn't boot up.
2. Proceeded to read many useless forum articles.
3. Read in my CCNP Cisco Press book that VMware Player was an option
(supposedly), so I booted up the HP and loaded the ISO into VMware Player. This
time it did begin to bootup, but died at "Detecting Server Hardware - this may take
several minutes" It would then say something like "Install Halted, hardware not
compatible"
4. Back to the Google. Found this article:
Unified Communications VMware Requirements - DocWiki
Didn't bother reading the whole thing.
Skipped to this section:
Supported Virtualization Hypervisor Vendors
At this time, the only vendor supported for UC is VMware.
Other vendors/products - such as Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Xen, Red Hat KVM - are
not supported for Cisco UC virtualization.
Supported VMware Products
VMware vSphere ESXi is required for Cisco UC virtualization.

ESX and ESXi are architecture options for VMware vSphere (click here
for a comparison). UC only supports ESXi. Recall that vSphere 3.x and
4.x offered both options, but 5.0+ only offers ESXi.
VMware vSphere ESX, regardless of version, is not supported for UC.
This is due to technical reasons and VMwares direction to transition from
ESX to ESXi. Note a VMware ESX cluster can contain VMware ESXi
servers running Cisco Unified Communications.
No other VMware server virtualization products are supported.

THERE YOU HAVE IT, Cisco says ESXi is supported, and NO OTHER VMWARE
SERVER VIRTUALIZATION PRODUCTS ARE SUPPORTED. So others options may
work, but they will probably be even more difficult to get working/aren't supported
by Cisco.
Well VCP is on my to-do list certs wise, and I happen to have a copy of VMware
ESXi 5, although previously had no experience with the product, only VirtualBox
and VMware Player.
So, I went back to my ACER and installed VMware ESXi VMvisor using a burned CD.
The install wipes the harddrive, so I lost my Ubuntu. It does prompt you with a
Yes/No before formatting so keep that in mind.
Once the ACER ESXi boots up, you just configure the network settings. Everything
else is done from another computer running vSphere client. Setup vSphere client on
my laptop, connected to the ACER, then created the VM for CUCM install. Which I
will also mention here the requirements for the VM:
CUCM VM REQUIREMENTS:
2gb RAM
72gb HDD
Also, I used RHEL 4 (32bit) Linux as the operating system type. There might be
other options that work as well, but I saw this in a youtube video and it works for
me.
CUC VM REQUIREMENTS:
2gb RAM
250gb HDD
Type: RHEL 4 (32bit) Linux OS

5. I connected to my ACER, created the CUCM VM and it booted, but again stuck on
"Hardware not compatible".
6. So I pulled the 500gb HDD from the ACER and put it into the HP (to try the
different hardware). VMware did allow this swap but had to do some reconfiguring
of itself at bootup with a short dialogue. I then connected to the HP ESXi server
from my vSphere client on laptop, and booted the CUCM VM. This time the VM gave
a different error message something along the lines of "Host is virtual hardware
capable, but Intel-VT is disabled"
7. Shut down the HP, booted into BIOS. Finally found the option for VT under a "OS
Security" menu. Enabled it. Rebooted. Connected from the laptop. Started the VM,

same problem. Amazed, I kept trying but it wouldn't work. FINALLY, I got the idea
to DELETE the VM and recreate it. The newly created VM with same setup
information worked and the installation continued.

8. Now here is another great tip I learned from a youtuber: take snapshots
throughout the install proccess because it is many hours long and if something goes
wrong, or you make a mistake on one of the options, you'll have to start all the way
over unless you have a snapshot. A good tip, BUT this caused my CUCM SUB and
CUC installs to fail. Why? because I took too many snapshots for them which by
default the snapshots take up the allotted HDD space of which I gave the minimum
required for both.
So what happened to my CUCM SUB and CUC installs? They failed towards the end.
"Not enough Disk space left"
As it turns out, there is an option to make the snapshots NOT consume the VM's
own diskspace. But the only way to enable this option is to first delete all of the
snapshots. So I had to delete all my snap shots, enable the option for
Independently stored snapshots, and start the whole install over from the begining.
SO CHECK THAT OPTION BEFORE STARTING THE INSTALL and BEFORE TAKING A
SNAPSHOT.
That setting is under: EDIT SETTINGS> HARDWARE> HARDDISK> MODE. Check
Independent and Persistent

Well thats all for now. My CUCM is up and running and my SUB and CUC installs are
down right now while I delete the snapshots then try again.