Installing a Guest Operating System
A new VM is analogous to a physical computer with an empty hard drive. All the components are there but without an operating system. After creating the VM, you're ready to install a supported guest OS. The following OSs are some of the more commonly installed guest OSs supported by ESXi (this is not a comprehensive list as there are over 200 supported OSs listed on the vSphere 6.7 Guest OS Compatibility Guide):
- Windows XP, Vista, 7/8/10
- Windows Server 2000/2003/2008/2012/2016/2019
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3/4/5/6/7
- CentOS 4/5/6/7
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8/9/10/11/12
- Debian Linux 6/7/8/9
- Oracle Linux 4/5/6/7
- Sun Solaris 10/11
- FreeBSD 7/8/9/10
- Ubuntu Linux
- CoreOS
- Apple OS X/macOS