I have a few large servers running VMware ESX 3.5 with a lot of unused capacity. I'd love to have this unused capacity going to support BOINC projects.

Does anyone have any experience with running BOINC in this kind of environment?

Obviously, these systems are virtualized for a reason - and there are many virtual machines that are performing various work. I'd prefer to find a solution that enables BOINC to use all of the unused cycles, rather than causing all sorts of chaos by using all of the resources of the virtuals - as with many environments, ours is oversubscribed such that any virtual machine that needs extra resources can take advantage of spare resources.

If possible, I would like to run BOINC on the native ESX host, not as a virtual. If this isn't possible, does anyone have any strategies for maximizing the use of spare resources, while allowing BOINC's virtual to operate secondary to the others?

I appreciate any feedback you may have to offer!

-Chris