Are you using ESXi?

I was able to get this to work using the physdiskwrite utility to write the dd image to the flash device, and the 7zip utility to extract the dd image file from the ISO (do not try to write the ISO to the Flash Stick). Also one other issue could be the flash device you are using may have multiple devices, like a emulated CD-ROM or floppy for software installation. The USB stick I'm using is pretty old (read: basic) and you may need the same thing. Also you could look into some of the Transcend products, as they are perfect for this type of application, having the USB or IDE flash device plugged directly into the motherboard. Hope that helps.

-hans

What you see is correct, the dd image is putting partitions down on the flash media, and you'll see them if you go into disk management. The first partition is the only one that will show up on windows, as the others are linux formatted partitions. Do you have an older USB thumb drive you can test it on? I'm still thinking that Firefly drive has multiple devices on it.

What hardware are you trying to boot via USB? I wouldn't suggest using a USB hard drive, if anything I would suggest just plugging in a normal drive into the system, and boot from the CD-Rom that you extracted the dd file from. Do the installation and make sure your system will work regardless of the boot method.

You'll need at least a 1 GB stick.  The marketing material states that the code is 32 MB, but you actually need more space than that.  When you copy it to a USB stick (or install to hard drive) you end up with several partitions the first been a small boot partition and the 2nd and 3rd are about 47 MB each and contain the hypervisor boot banks (with contain the 32 MB of ESXi code).  With a fresh install,  only one boot bank is used.  When you install a firmware upgrade,  the complete 32 MB of ESXi code is written to the alternate boot bank, and the host will then boot from that partition.  The old primary boot partition becames the alternate boot bank.  That way you can revert to the old version very quickly if you have problems.  If your USB stick was under 750 MB, you probably having a problem with insufficient space to hold all the partitions.

Cr0n,

Generally speaking, any 1 gig key that does not use any encryption technology or U3 technology should work.  Preferrably, the USB key should be wear-leveled to extend its life.

Note that VMware does not support embedded solutions that do not eminate from server vendors.  Aside from the management features that OEM inject into the VMware ESXi base image, there is considerable USB qualification efforts that take place to ensure ruggedness and that, effectively, the USB key outlasts the server.