ok, so it appears 5.1 is special as this changes from 32bit to 64bit, apologies!
did you follow these steps exactly ?
5. (Required only on the Panorama virtual appliance) Modify the settings on the virtual appliance.
a. Power off the Panorama virtual appliance on the ESX(i) server.
b. Select the Panorama virtual machine, and right-click. Select Edit
Settings... and make the following changes:
i. On the Hardware tab, change the SCSI Controller Type from BusLogic Parallel to LSI Logic Parallel.
ii. (Optimal performance recommendation) Increase resource allocation for RAM and CPU based on the following minimum system
requirements for Panorama 5.1: Quad Core CPU (2 GHz); use 3GHz if you have 10 or more firewalls 4GB RAM; use 16GB if
have 10 or more firewalls 40GB disk space
iii. On the Options tab, change the Guest Operating System for the virtual appliance from Other Linux (32-bit) to Other Linux (64-bit).
c. Power on the Panorama virtual appliance.
If you did, and the system froze up you may want to reach out to support to see what could have happened. under most other circumstances it would not be recommended to do so but in this case it appears it is recommended, sorry for the confusion
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