VMware Esxi on Raspberry Pi 5

[aclarke_31]

Hello guys.

I'm normally hanging around in hardware hangout but today I'm having some software related issues.

I'm trying to put VMware Esxi vSphere 8 on my Raspberry Pi 5.

I've seen people all over the internet being able to do it, but I'm having huge problems.

Does anyone have any guides / how to's / walkthroughs on how to do it?

Any advice if you've even achieved it yourself.

Thanks everyone 🙂

[_neutrino Veteran]

Give this one a go. Looks rather straight forward.

Link

 

 

[aclarke_31]

Its only straight forward if you have a bootloader that UEFI enabled Neutrino.

I can't actually put ESXi vSphere on via installer because my pi won't actually boot its UEFI worproject BIOS / Setup / configuration screens.

Everytime I try to access them, the screen goes black on bootup and doesn't show the RPI logo.

Can someone help?

If I need to record it demonstrating, I can.

Thanks

[_neutrino Veteran]

On 13/08/2025 at 14:26, aclarke_31 said:

Its only straight forward if you have a bootloader that UEFI enabled Neutrino.

I can't actually put ESXi vSphere on via installer because my pi won't actually boot its UEFI worproject BIOS / Setup / configuration screens.

Everytime I try to access them, the screen goes black on bootup and doesn't show the RPI logo.

Can someone help?

If I need to record it demonstrating, I can.

Thanks

Hmm, thats curious then again its a mostly dead project these days. Are you using a decent quality MicroSD card? I know they are very particular about that sort of thing?

I've never personally gotten ESXi running on a Pi but Proxmox is pretty easy to get running on it.

[aclarke_31]

I'll have the same problem with Proxmox. It just won't boot without a UEFI bootloader....

[aclarke_31]

UEFI bootloaders tried to call "bootaa64.efi" within the ISO and then it should boot from that, but at the moment, I don't even get that

[aclarke_31]

I see it plastered all over the net that people are using ESXi on RPi5 but there must be some way it's happening and people must know how to do it.

Do we have any other resident PiOS / RPi5 experts on the forum that can help? Or am I better off posting elsewhere?

Thanks chap.