Specifications

PXE boot from the network. “PXE Booting the ESXi Installer,” on page 91

Boot from a remote location using a remote management application. See “Using Remote Management

Applications,” on page 99

Download and Burn the ESXi Installer ISO Image to a CD or DVD

If you do not have an ESXi installation CD/DVD, you can create one.

You can also create an installer ISO image that includes a custom installation script. See “Create an Installer

ISO Image with a Custom Installation or Upgrade Script,” on page 91.

Procedure

1 Download the ESXi installer from the VMware Web site at

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/downloads.

ESXi is listed under Datacenter & Cloud Infrastructure.

2 Confirm that the md5sum is correct.

See the VMware Web site topic Using MD5 Checksums at

http://www.vmware.com/download/md5.html.

3 Burn the ISO image to a CD or DVD.

Format a USB Flash Drive to Boot the ESXi Installation or Upgrade

You can format a USB flash drive to boot the ESXi installation or upgrade.

These instructions assume that you are performing the procedure on a Linux machine and that the USB

flash drive is detected by the operating system as /dev/sdb.

NOTE The ks file containing the installation script cannot be located on the same USB flash drive that you

are using to boot the installation or upgrade.

Prerequisites

From the VMware Web site, download the ESXi ISO image VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.x.x-

XXXXXX.x86_64.iso, including the file isolinux.cfg,where 5.x.x is the version of ESXi you are installing,

and XXXXXX is the build number of the installer ISO image.

Procedure

1 If your USB flash drive is not detected as /dev/sdb, or you are not sure how your USB flash drive is

detected, determine how it is detected.

a In a terminal window, run the following command.

tail -f /var/log/messages

This command displays current log messages in the terminal window.

b Plug in your USB flash drive.

The terminal window displays several messages identifying the USB flash drive, in a format similar

to the following message.

Oct 25 13:25:23 ubuntu kernel: [ 712.447080] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable

disk

In this example, "[sdb]" identifies the USB device. If your device is identified differently, use that

identification, without the brackets, in place of sdb, in this procedure.

vSphere Upgrade

88 VMware, Inc.