Running esxi 7 off PXE - not the installer!

[dummy998]

I am a long-time esxi user. Starting with v4 and up to v7, as the hardware is compatible and alligned with requirements.

I'd like to ask, if it's possible to run esxi off the network. Let me emphasize this... Not the installer, the production grade esxi.

The reason for asking is I had to replace two USB sticks, which were worn out, but were running 5+ years just fine. I was also running Linuxes of all kinds off PXE network mainly having tftp server and, of course, a possibility of having a networked (NFSed) root disk.

Or perhaps my request/question is a bit out of touch? Would having root NFS disk mean to have a source of instability?

Or now everything goes into a direction having a small SSD disk as a root disk for esxi?

[scott28tt]

I have reported your post to the moderators, asking them to move it to the area for ESXi, since you aren't asking about NSX.

[Tibmeister]

Starting with ESXi7, USB and SDCARD for boot device is no longer supported.  Boot from SAN I believe is still in there, but the recommendation is local disks in a minimum of RAID1 for ESXi install.  Not only has the amount of logging increased, but the entire ESXi root filesystem has changed.

[lamw]

Yes, this is exactly what vSphere Auto Deploy provides https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/8.0/vsphere-esxi-upgrade/GUID-9A827220-177E-40DE-99A0-E1EB...