Booting VM from CD

[Doberman2011101]

Hello,

I am trying to boot one of our VM's from a CD and have run into a roadblock.

We currently have 2 ESX's, and are running VSphere Client 4.0 and I need to boot one of the VM's from a CD that is housed on ESX1.  I have the bootable CD inserted into ESX1, but the VM itself does not appear to be linked to the drive.  It does have a CD drive listed under my computer, however it does not recognize that a CD is inserted.  I have changed the boot order from the VM's BIOS to CD first, but I am now stuck.  I just assumed the server that is ESX1 would have it's CD bay linked to all the VM's housed on it, but that does not appear to be the case.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[dales123 · Accepted solution]

If you want to use the CD drive in the ESX server itself then you would tick the "connect to host device" option on the map cd drive button in the vm window. If you wanted though your could create an ISO out of the physical CD and serve it up to the VM that way which is the main method of transferring cd/dvd images these days to vm's.

[Doberman2011101]

Thanks so much....did the trick.