Mount the ESXi Installation ISO and copy all the contents from the ISO to the USB flash drive. Plug in the original USB flash drive and get that.
(I was already playing with the newly released Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in VMware Workstation, so I’ll be using that) Plug in the new USB flash drive and get the device address (/sdb).
Download a linux distro of your choice and boot your PC from the CD.
Flag the first partition on the volume as active and bootable. How to clone ESXi USB install to new USB drive.Start the command line partitoner fdisk in interactive mode (You will need administrative privileges for this). Don’t forget to use the disk# number obtained in step 2. Maybe de ESXi installation config is different for SD vs USB devices. So i think its related to the different type of storage device. Then tried to boot the ESXi Server and it wouldnt boot. Unmount the USB Drive, Note: This is not the same as Eject. I tried another thing I have put the micro SD card in a micro sd to usb adapter (passive) and put is in a USB slot. diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS "ESXI" MBR disk# Now we need to format the drive with filesystem FAT32 and partition map MBR using the following command. You should now see another disk show up, in my case disk3.
Im able to boot in Legacy Boot Mode from the new SAN but when trying to use UEFI Boot mode I can install ESXi but once that completes it reboots and enters the BIOS screen of the B200. We are migrating to a new SAN storage and in the process working on vSphere upgrades. Insert the USB Flash then run the diskutil list command again. Looking for a little guidance on getting ESXi 6.7 to SAN boot in UEFI mode. Open Terminal and list the mounted disks using the diskutil list command. Download the ESXi Installation ISO (I used ESXi 7.0b).The VM is configured by default to boot using BIOS.Ĭhange the virtual machine settings to enable Boot with EFI instead of BIOSīoot your ESXi installation from the usb key to use it immediately or to change the configuration for use in another host, in my case, my NUC host. This is the tricky part, the esxi installation won’t boot on this virtual machine after installation, why ? because ESXi boot in EFI mode which not supported in our current configuration. Note: you don’t need to create a vmdk hard drive.Ĭhoose the usb key as the destination and install the ESXi on this virtual machine. In my case it was option 3, but without a boot manager.Ĭreate an empty VMware workstation virtual machine as show in this picture and attach the ESXi installation iso image. If you have done some research on the internet, you will find basically three way to use an usb thumb drive with an esxi installation:ġ- Use Rufus to create an esxi installation mediaĢ- Use a VMware Workstation virtual machine to install esxi on the usb key.ģ- Use a VMware Workstation virtual machine to install and boot the esxi installation inside this virtual machine using a boot manager (Plop for example) So i decided use a VMware Workstation (12.1.0 in this case) to install te esxi 6.0 on the usb drive.
I was in the process of building my home lab based on an Intel NUC, there was only one small problem, I don’t have a desktop monitor to view the esxi installation progress. This is the tip of the day on how to install ESXi on usb thumbdrive and boot it inside a VMware Workstation virtual machine.