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AshishBarot
Contributor
Contributor

Esxi installation on USB pen drive.

Hi all,

I have one query about esxi installation.

I have desktop machine with AMD processor, 2 GB ram with Ubunut linux.

Now I dont wnat to disturb this setup and want to install Esxi.  [ Free version for 60 days. ]

Is it possible. If yes, can anyone pl guide me how?

Or not then, do I require to use hard disk for installation? If yes, then how can I proceed ?

In any case I want to use esxi on my desktop machine, can I ?

Best Regards,

Ashish Barot.

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

You could install ESXi to a USB flash device and then access iSCSI or NFS storage on another host.   You won't be able to create a local datastore without another hard drive or without formatting the existing one.

ESXi provides a pretty minimal console interface and you can't interact with VMs running on the host directly at the console.  If that's a requirement for you then you might want to look at VMware Player, Workstation or Server.

AshishBarot
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks Dave for quick reply.

One more query.


So in my current scenario, if I create one NFS share on running Ubuntu linux, and then try to access it via Esxi, does it work?

And if yes, then can I create VM on it? I have 2GB ram only on desktop.

Regards,

Ashish Barot.

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Virtualinfra
Commander
Commander

Is your machine has a option of boot from USB.

Then you can try this insert a USB flash supported by VMware refer the below link for preparing usb flash drive for esxi installation.

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.install.doc_50/GUID-33C3E7D5-2...

Once you have done with the formating.

burn the ESXI installable on a cr-rom and boot with the cd and proceed installation.

or

Easy and good to use.

download vmware workstation for linux - i am not sure if that support ubuntu linux.

create a virtual machine install esxi and start you testing,

Award point for the helpful and correct answer by clicking the below tab Smiley Happy

Thanks & Regards Dharshan S VCP 4.0,VTSP 5.0, VCP 5.0
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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

ESXi will reserve some overhead, but you should be OK with 1 or 2 smaller VMs.  I haven't tried using NFS on ubuntu for ESXi myself, but I have seen some references to it and it should work OK for you.

AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

A Linux NFS server can work as a datastore (remember to use NFS3 over TCP and no_root_squash option).

But if you plan to user for a production environment please confider that it is a potential big single point of failure.

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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