When powering on a nested virtual machine, vSphere Client reports the warning: Running VMware ESX in a virtual machine will result in degraded performance. Do you want to continue?

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

When you power on a nested virtual machine, you experience these symptoms:

• vSphere Client reports this warning:
  
  Running VMware ESX in a virtual machine will result in degraded performance. Do you want to continue?
  
  
• In the /vmfs/volumes/Datastore/VMfolder/vmware.log file of the virtual machine, you see the entry similar to:
  
  Running VMware ESX in a virtual machine will result in degraded performance. Do you want to continue?
  
  

Cause

This issue occurs due to one of these reasons:

• You see the warning (as described in the Symptoms section) in vSphere Client because ESXi throw out a warning when a nested virtual machine is restarted.
• You see the warning (as described in the Symptoms section) in the vmware.log file because the status of msg.autoAnswer is set to TRUE in the .vmx file or /etc/vmware/config. file

VMware does not support running ESXi hypervisor inside a virtual machine in production environments. For more information, see Support for running ESXi/ESX as a nested virtualization solution (2009916).

Note: ESXi hypervisor will show degraded performance if it is running inside a virtual machine.

Resolution

If you see the warning in the vSphere Client, click Continue in the vSphere Client dialog box to continue running the virtual machine with degraded performance.

If you see the warning in the vmware.log file:

1. Set the status of msg.autoAnswer to FALSE.
2. Restart the nested virtual machine.
   

Additional Information

Support for running ESXi/ESX as a nested virtualization solution
ネストされた仮想マシンをパワーオンすると、vSphere Client が次の警告を報告する：VMware ESX を仮想マシンで実行すると、パフォーマンスが低下します。続行しますか?
打开嵌套虚拟机电源时，vSphere Client 报告警告：在虚拟机中运行 VMware ESX 将导致性能下降。是否要继续？