This post may be useful for the VMware Administrators who is running small lab environmnet. They may be running a small setup of one or two ESXi host with one windows VM which is acting as a Domain Controller. As VMware admin’s ,we are so much used to work with vSphere windows client against vSphere web Client. Have you tried to installing vSphere client on Domian controller machine. By default, that is not possible. When we try to install vSphere windows client on Domain Controller, We may end up with the error message” vSphere Client fails with a message saying the as a requirements the management station has to be running XP SP2 and not a domain controller”. For people running Lab environment, Will not prefer to install another windows VM just to install vSphere client. In that situation, You can make use of this OS SKIP command to install the vSphere client on Windows Domain controller as a workaround.

Below is the error message you will receive, when you try to install vSphere client on Windows Domain Controller machine.

 You can use an advanced switch when installing VI client on Domain Controller . You can launch the installer from a command line and in this case there is a switch to use which skips the OS check. Here is the command to use:

VMware-viclient.exe /VSKIP_OS_CHECKS=”1″

That’s it. vSphere client installation will complete without any error. You cannot use the same switch to install Web client because Web Client cannot be installed on Domain Controller. I hope this is informative for you. Thanks for reading!!!. Be Social and share it in Social media, if you feel worth sharing it.