I was rebuilding my VMware lab so though I would document the process. This can be either done using VMware workstation or in my case I used the free version of ESXi. I have a HPE Micro server G10 with 1 250GB SSD and a 2TB HDD with 1 quad-core AMD Opteron processor and 32GB of RAM.  I already had ESXi installed on the physical server so this will be creating nested ESXi host and install vCenter for management.

Here is the link to the ESXi 6.5 downlaod page

https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=free-esxi6

Once the ISO is downloaded. Logon to the ESXi host using https://hostname/UI or https://IPAddres/UI and create a new virtual machine.

Select the version OS ESXi the host will run on and the Guest OS version. 

Add in any additional hardware and on the CPU options set Expose hardware assisted virtualization. 

Power On the VM and wait for the ESXi OS to load. 

Select the disk for ESXi to be installed on. 

Select language

Enter root password.

When the OS loads it will have a DHCP address. 

To set a static IP and DNS settings go to configure management network

Select additional NIC for resilience.

If you want to set a host name there will need to be a DNS address created on the DNS server or it wont resolve when testing. 

Once all IP settings are set to test go to test management network to confirm the managment network and DNS is working correctly. 

The last step if the Nested ESXi host are going to run VM’s. The physical ESXi host that will run the Nested ESXi will needed to have two settings change on the vSwitch or the VM’s will only be able to communicate with the ESXi host but not the rest of the network. To allow Communication enable Promiscuous mode and Forged transmits I also generally just enable MAC address changes.