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SteveV01
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Mounting ISO installer from external hard drive

Hi everybody,

We need to install new ESXi server and configure VM's remotely on one site with really slow internet connection. We prepared an external hard drive with all the necessary ISO images and shipped it to the site. The idea was that the local people connect it to the physical server and we just set it up the way that we mount all the ISO images including the ESXi installer from the external hard drive (formatted NTFS).

Well...turned out it' not that easy, even though our server has Remote Management Card.

To be specific, we have iDRAC7 on Dell R620. And we want to install ESXi v 5.0 U1.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

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sparrowangelste
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vmroyale's suggestion of using the drac's iso mount from a local pc  is the only thing you can do if you dont have esxi installed.

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com

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vmroyale
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Hello and welcome to the communities.

Can you run the iDRAC Virtual Console from a local pc at the remote site, and then just connect the external HD to this pc? That would allow you to add the ISO image and get ESXi installed on the R620. Then you could use the vSphere Client connected to this ESXi host to upload the remaining ISOs to a datastore on the ESXi host.

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
SteveV01
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Hello vmroyale,

Thank you for your reply. This procedure as you described was exactly how we managed to do it. But what we had in mind is if there is some way to attach the ISO from directly conected USB external drive. But it seems there is not...

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sparrowangelste
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vmroyale's suggestion of using the drac's iso mount from a local pc  is the only thing you can do if you dont have esxi installed.

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com
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iw123
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I guess as an alternative you could install ESXi from a separate USB device, then once you have the OS on there you could copy the guest os isos from the usb external drive to your datastores.

*Please, don't forget the awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers
vmroyale
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There is a way, but with an NTFS formatted drive it won't work. I would think that you would be better off with copying the files to the datastore in comparison to trying to access them via USB anyway.

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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SteveV01
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Thank you sparrowangels...,

Now we can stop trying to make it possible some way, since we know we really did the best.

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SteveV01
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You're right vmroyale,

Copying seems really much better way 🙂

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