We have been able to run ESX and ESXi in VMware workstation for a while now, I find it particularly useful for testing and for the odd demonstration.

If you are unsure how to do this I came across a nice article today which includes a step by step video on how to configure this useful feature…

http://www.petri.co.il/running-vmware-esx-and-esxi-in-workstation-on-your-desktop-pc.htm

It reads…

In the following new video, I demonstrate, step by step, how you can run VMware ESX Server 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 inside VMware Workstation 6.5. This is also shown in my Train Signal VMware ESX Server video training course.

While you wouldn’t run ESX in Workstation for a production server, running ESX in Workstation is an excellent way to test and demonstrate ESX Server (and the entire VMware Virtual Infrastructure suite) on a single PC. Think about it – what if you had a single PC with 2 ESX Servers, an iSCSI virtual SAN, and a Windows Server running Virtual Center. With that, you would have “VMware Infrastructure in a box” and be able to run powerful features like VMotion, SVMotion, VMHA, and Update Manager, all on a single PC.