For a while I’ve been postponing enabling Virtualization on my new microserver. But this weekend my wife was visiting her parents and I already watched all the series I wanted to, so no more procrastination!

Yet when I started, my HP Proliant Microserver showed this warning during the installation of VMWare ESXi VSphere:

<HARDWARE_VIRTUALIZATION WARNING: Hardware Virtualization is not a feature of the CPU, or is not enabled in the BIOS>

I ignored it, hoping for the best, but when I tried to power on a VM a similar message popped up:

Failed – This host supports Intel VT-x, but Intel VT-x is restricted. Intel VT-x might be restricted because ‘trusted execution’ has been enabled in the BIOS/firmware settings or because the host has not been power-cycled since changing this setting.

FIX: disable trusted execution (Intel TXT) in the Microserver BIOS

Follow these steps:

1. Enter BIOS (F9 during boot)
2. Enter menu option System Configuration
   
   
3. Enter BIOS/Platform Configuration (RBSU)
   
   
4. Enter Server Security
   
5. Disable Microsoft (R) Secured-core Support
   
6. Enter Intel Security Options and disable Intel(R) TXT Support
   
7. Enter Virtualization Options and make sure Intel(R) Virtualization Technology, Intel(R) VT-d and Access Control Service are enabled
   

Disclaimer

Now you should know I just enabled and disabled these option based on reddit and Stackoverflow posts, and since nothing production like is running on this node I’m fine if I might have missed some steps or perhaps enabled too much. Basically I’m saying; You are responsible for your own server 🙂 Check with a professional if your node is running more important tasks.

Yet if I made a booboo somewhere, I would appreciate if you would please let me know and I’ll update the post accordingly.