Running VMware Player in a VM

If you want to know how to install and run VMware Player inside of a virtual machine running on VMware ESX host, this post is for you.

Note that this workaround requires that VMware Tools are disabled, so some VMware management tools may fail to work with this VM correctly. Thus, this workaround is good as a temporary solution only, and you may want to roll it back as soon as you are done with operations that require VMware Player running. You can have 2 VMX files, and register VM with one or another as necessary.

Add the following lines to the .VMX file of your VM:

isolation.tools.getPtrLocation.disable = “TRUE”
isolation.tools.setPtrLocation.disable = “TRUE”
isolation.tools.setVersion.disable = “TRUE”
isolation.tools.getVersion.disable = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_directexec = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_chksimd = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_ntreloc = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_selfmod = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_reloc = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_btinout = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_btmemspace = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_btpriv = “TRUE”
monitor_control.disable_btseg = “TRUE”

Also, change the existing tools.upgrade.policy line to:

tools.upgrade.policy = “manual”

Then, start your VM and install VMware Player normally, as you would do on a physical computer.

Wonder why would you need to do this? This is primarily intended for Veeam Backup users. One of the most popular Veeam Backup features is instant guest OS file restore from backups. In order to perform file restores from guest OS other than Microsoft Windows, you need to use File Level Restore wizard. This wizard uses tiny virtual appliance to do its magic, and requires VMware Player in order to run the appliance. Some of our customers prefer to install Veeam Backup in a VM, but still want to be able to perform Linux file level restores – this is when this workaround may come handy.