Installing Kali Linux in a VMware ESXi Virtual Machine

Last updated: Nov 30, 2024

There are many hypervisors compatible with Kali Linux, as can be seen on the download page: https://www.kali.org/.

Interestingly, there is no pre-built native ESXi image. Indeed, in the Virtual Machines part there is a VMware Kali Linux image, but this is for the VMware Workstation product, which is not natively compatible with the VMware ESXi product.

I'm going to detail here a method for importing the VMware Workstation image on a VMware ESXi host.

Configuration:
- VMware ESXi: 8
- Kali Linux Release: 2024.3

Download Kali Linux

The first thing to do is to connect to the official download page: https://www.kali.org

Then click on Virtual Machines:

Kali Linux official website showing the Virtual Machines download option highlighted for VMware and VirtualBox

Choose your download method (Torrent or direct download):

Kali Linux Virtual Machines download page highlighting the VMware 64-bit option with file size and download methods

Once downloaded, you should have a 7zip archive file:

Compressed file kali-linux-2022.2-vmware-amd64.7z representing the downloaded Kali Linux VMware image

Extract files, here for example, from a GNU/Linux shell (this command extracts files from a KALI folder):

user@host:~$ mkdir KALI && 7z e ./kali-linux-2022.2-vmware-amd64.7z -o./KALI/

Import a Kali Linux Virtual Machine to VMware ESXi

Import to ESXi host

Note: first connect to the ESXi host web page and accept the https web certificate (otherwise downloading from vcsa will not work).

Go to the datastore menu, select the storage where you want to store the Kali Linux Virtual Machine and click on the «UPLOAD FOLDER» link:

VMware ESXi interface highlighting the Upload Folder option in the datastore view

Once downloaded, open the KALI folder, select the kali-linux-2024.3-vmware-amd64.vmx file and click on the «REGISTER VM» link:

VMware ESXi interface showing the Register VM option highlighted for the Kali Linux VMX file

In the main menu, right-click on the kali-linux-2024.3-vmware-amd64 virtual machine and click on Upgrade VM Compatibility:

VMware ESXi menu showing the Upgrade VM Compatibility option for Kali Linux virtual machine

Enable SSH and convert the vmdk disk

From the vcsa web console, go to Configure > Services and start the ssh service:

VMware ESXi interface highlighting the SSH service with the Start button in the Services section

Connect to the ESXi host via ssh:

user@host:~$ ssh root@ESXi_IP

List datastores:

[root@localhost:~] df -h
	Filesystem   Size   Used Available Use% Mounted on
	VMFS-6     465.0G 286.4G    178.6G  62% /vmfs/volumes/500G
	VMFS-L     119.8G   3.9G    115.9G   3% /vmfs/volumes/OSDATA-0269c4cb-fe6feb41-f534-d4be32a1d43e
	vfat         4.0G 203.8M      3.8G   5% /vmfs/volumes/BOOTBANK1
	vfat         4.0G  64.0K      4.0G   0% /vmfs/volumes/BOOTBANK2

Move to the KALI directory:

[root@localhost:~] cd /vmfs/volumes/500G/KALI

Rename the vmdk file:

[root@localhost:~] mv kali-linux-2024.3-vmware-amd64.vmdk OLD.vmdk

Convert vmdk file:

[root@localhost:~] vmkfstools -i OLD.vmdk kali-linux-2024.3-vmware-amd64.vmdk

You should now be able to start the Kali Linux Virtual Machine. Don't forget the default login/password : kali / kali 🙂

Computing

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Misc

Installing Kali Linux in a VMware ESXi Virtual Machine

Download Kali Linux

Import a Kali Linux Virtual Machine to VMware ESXi

Import to ESXi host

Enable SSH and convert the vmdk disk