New VMs only give "Operating System not found" on Installation boot from DVD or Image

[unitednetworkin]

Hi,

we're using  the vSphere Web Client to access a vCenter 6 running in a HyperV-VM on Windows Server 2012, and connected to an ESXI 6 on an Acer V275 PC with 4GB RAM.

We have now repeatedly created 3 VMs: for Debian 8 32bit, Debian 8 64bit and Windows Server 2008r2.

In every case we connected the VM's DVD drive to the appropriate image from vmimages/tools-isoimages, namely linux.img or windows.img, respectively.

This we did either directly when creating the VM or afterwards when Powering it up, according to the instructions in the web client.

The problem: In every single case, the VM booted into trying PXE, which fails, then after a half-second pause followed by "Operating system not found".

We tried changing the boot devices priority in the BIOS, also using the boot menu accessible by ESC and choosing the DVD drive. Nothing changed.

The one thing that came up was that the Hard disk is presented as a virtualized SCSI drive, but without any SCSI controller uttering the slightest Text about it.

An IDE disk is not present.

What can we do more?

--

Regards,

-- Wolf Lichtenberger, United Networking

info@united-networking.eu
http://www.united-networking.eu/
Karoline-Balser-Weg 2
64291 Darmstadt
Tel.: +49 6151 - 49326 80
Amtsgericht Darmstadt HRB 89667

Ust-ID: DE277379081

Steuernr: 007 247 02359

[continuum]

Interesting - do you have read any documentation, blog-posts or whatever that made you think that this would work ?
The correct order to install a new guestos is:
1. first boot : use the installation-media - preferably an iso-file you uploaded to your datastore
2. install the guest
3. when the guest-install has finished power off the VM
4. after first boot from virtual disk connect the vmware-tools iso and follow the instructions
Your VM tried to use PXE for booting because all other boot-options were unbootable.
In case you expected that windows.iso provided with ESXi would start a Windows-installation - well no - nobody would expect that

[unitednetworkin]

Thanks for your reply, it gave us the inspiration where to look further.

Well, yes, when we at first looked around in the datastore and found those image files under vmimages/tools-isoimages, even suggestively named, if somewhat small, what were we to think?

Right now, we believe those to be the VMware Tools CD images, is that correct?

Anyway, we finally got the client integration plugin to work (it had denied function in Firefox on first try) and uploaded some .ISO files. With those, the VMs booted indeed.

So the answer apperas rather to be "_only_ from an iso-file you uploaded to your datastore" because there's nothing suitable there beforehand.

Solved for now.

--

Regards,

-- Wolf Lichtenberger, United Networking

info@united-networking.eu
http://www.united-networking.eu/
Karoline-Balser-Weg 2
64291 Darmstadt
Tel.: +49 6151 - 49326 80
Amtsgericht Darmstadt HRB 89667

Ust-ID: DE277379081

Steuernr: 007 247 02359