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steveb05
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Install ESXi from USB media

I know there is an official document about this and lots of information on the web, but I wanted to share my version...I think its mighty useful. This is from a Windows workstation and the procedure is written from memory, but it should get you there. This should also help those wanting to PXEboot. Also, if you get a big enough drive, you can save the OVA files for vCenter etc and have the whole kit-and-kaboodle in one place!

-----<I'm not responsible if you blow up your workstation e.g. format your hard drive>-------


1.Download SYSLINUX from http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Download and unzip the contents. For the example, I'll assume you unzipped to c:\temp\syslinux
2.Insert a USB flash drive (even the new ones that don't have the RMB set work with this)
3.Identify what drive letter the flash drive received. For the example, I'll assume E:
4.Make sure it is formatted FAT32
5.Launch an elevated command prompt (as administrator)
6.type C:\temp\syslinux\bios\win32\syslinux.exe -mfa E: (MAKE SURE E IS YOUR FLASH DRIVE) and hit enter
7.Copy the following files to the root of your flash drive
    •C:\temp\syslinux\bios\memdisk\memdisk
    •C:\temp\syslinux\bios\com32\menu\menu.c32
    •C:\temp\syslinux\bios\com32\elflink\ldlinux\ldlinux.c32
    •C:\temp\syslinux\bios\com32\libutil\libutil.c32
8.Copy the ISO files of the ESXi installs you need (yep, you can have more than one depending on the size of the drive)
9.Create a syslinux.cfg file with the following (modify as you need for more entries)

DEFAULT menu.c32
MENU TITLE ESXi-5.5.0-1331820 Installation Menu
NOHALT 1
PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 80
LABEL Universal Image
  KERNEL memdisk
  APPEND iso
  INITRD /ESXi-5.5.0-1331820-Universal.iso
  MENU LABEL ESXi-5.5.0-1331820 ^Universal Image

- Steve Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you found it useful. Steve Brill Virtualization Junkie VMware, SAN/NAS, Networking and Server Infrastructure Engineer
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