vmware on unsupported hardware, should I avoid at all costs?

I have a relatively old Supermicro Superserver 6015v-m3 with a x7dvl-3 motherboard, checking compatibility on vmware website, is compatible only with esxi 3.1

I ignored and tried installing esxi 5.5, and the installation ran smoothly with no issues, I imported a couple of vm I had on another server, and they work flawlessly.

Am I crazy planning to use the server in production? Installing esxi 5.5 on unsupported hardware is really a no-no, or vmware is particularly picky and I should feel comfortable?

Solution 1:

Am I crazy planning to use the server in production?

In production? Yes. You are absolutely, 110% without-a-doubt out of your mind.
Let me give you a delightful automotive analogy:

You go to Porsche and buying a brand new roadster.
Before you drive off the lot the dealer tells you "Use only premium unleaded automotive gasoline. Anything else is not supported".
You pull up to your local gas station and put diesel in the tank.
Your new Porsche's engine self-destructs on the freeway.

When you call your Porsche dealer what do you think they're going to tell you?
VMWare will tell you the exact same thing if anything goes even the slightest bit wrong with your production system that is built on unsupported hardware.

For a development environment (something you don't care about and can afford to have down for extended periods of time) - sure, go ahead and use this unsupported hardware.
When (not if) something goes wrong you're not going to be too hard up because of it. Maybe a software release slips a few days, but we're not talking customer-facing outages.

(To continue our automotive analogy: That's like running used cooking oil in an early 1980s Diesel Mercedes Benz - not recommended, but the thing is a tank and you probably don't care if you have to overhaul the engine because a stray french fry got sucked into the injection system).