Hardware and System Resources To install and use ESXi 5.1, your hardware and system resources must meet the following requirements: ■ Supported server platform. For a list of supported platforms, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility. ■ ESXi 5.1 will install and run only on servers with 64-bit x86 CPUs. ■ ESXi 5.1 requires a host machine with at least two cores. ■ ESXi 5.1 supports only LAHF and SAHF CPU instructions. ■ ESXi 5.1 requires the NX/XD bit to be enabled for the CPU in the BIOS. ■ ESXi supports a broad range of x64 multicore processors. For a complete list of supported processors, see the VMware compatibility guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility. ■ ESXi requires a minimum of 2GB of physical RAM. Provide at least 8GB of RAM to take full advantage of ESXi features and run virtual machines in typical production environments. ■ To support 64-bit virtual machines, support for hard