I have been trying for the past two days to install a guest OS onto my ESXi 3.5 (all updates applied). The trouble is when I try to install the guest OS. It seems the virtual server will only look for network boot (PXE). No matter what I do with the boot sequence (I even disabled the NIC at one point), it still tries to boot network first. I have a 10 second delay on the boot from power up and I do connect the client device CD/DVD ROM. Do I have to set up a PXE boot server and if so, how and where can I get a freeware version? Any help will be appreciated.
You can use something like this http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm to create an ISO image from the DVD. Right click on the datastore and select browse. You'll then see icons to upload / download files.
