Windows XP on ESX Server - Hardware and Drivers

When "Microsoft Windows XP (32-bit)" is selected as the Guest Operating System on ESX server, the default hardware devices that get created are as follows:

From an OS install / deployment perspective, the most significant items are disk and network.

Windows XP dosn't ship with drivers for the BusLogic adapter, so drivers must be specified either during a manual install (F6) or integrated into an automated setup routine. I've described this process in seperate posts:

• Adding drivers during a manual install of Windows XP on ESX server
• Adding drivers during an unattended install of Windows XP on ESX Server

Hardware Details
For reference I've listed the hardware details and drivers that are used on Windows XP.

DISK:
Name : VMware SCSI Controller
Manufacturer : VMware, Inc.
PNP Device ID : PCI\VEN_104B&DEV_1040&SUBSYS_1040104B&REV_01\3&61AAA01&0&80
Driver : c:\windows\system32\drivers\vmscsi.sys

Network :
Name : VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter Adapter
Device ID : PCI\VEN_1022&DEV_2000&SUBSYS_20001022&REV_10\3&61AAA01&0&88
Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\vmxnet.sys


Device Manager View
Once installed, this is what it looks like in Device Manager:

VMWare ESX Server, "Guest Operating System" and .vmx files

In ESX Server, the "Guest Operating System" must be specified when creating a virtual machine. This results in certain (virtual) hardware components being used.

Guest Operating System as shown by the GUI


Virtual Machine Hardware Properties

The screenshot below shows the Hardware properties applied after selecting "Microsoft Windows XP Professional (32-bit)" as the Operating System.

Virtual Machine Configuration File ".vmx"
Virtual Machine configuration details are stored as a file with a .vmx extension. These are simply text files with specific fields that define the virtual machine configuration.

Relevent entries for the configuration above are shown below: