Specifications
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Server with a hardware configuration that is supported with ESXi 5.0. See the Hardware Compatibility
Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php.
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Network security policies to allow TFTP traffic (UDP port 69)
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(Optional) Installation script, the kickstart file. See “About Installation and Upgrade Scripts,” on
page 117.
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Network adapter with PXE support on the target ESXi host
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IPv4 networking. IPv6 is not supported for PXE booting.
Use a native VLAN in most cases. If you want to specify the VLAN ID to be used with PXE booting, check
that your NIC supports VLAN ID specification.
Procedure
1 Create the /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg directory on your TFTP server.
2 On the Linux machine, install PXELINUX.
PXELINUX is included in the SYSLINUX package. Extract the files, locate the file pxelinux.0 and copy
it to the /tftpboot directory on your TFTP server.
3 Configure the DHCP server.
The DHCP server sends the following information to your client hosts:
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The name or IP address of your TFTP server.
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The name of your initial boot file. This is pxelinux.0.
4 Copy the contents of the ESXi installer image to the /var/lib/tftpboot directory on the TFTP server.
5 (Optional) For a scripted installation, in the boot.cfg file, add the kernelopt option on the next line after
the kernel command, to specify the location fo the installation script.
In the following example, XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the IP address of the server where the installation
script resides.
kernelopt=ks=http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/esxi_ksFiles/ks.cfg
6 Copy the isolinux.cfg file from the ESXi installer ISO image to the /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg directory.
The isolinux.cfg file contains the following code, where XXXXXX is the build number of the ESXi
installer image:
DEFAULT menu.c32
MENU TITLE ESXi-5.0.0-XXXXXX-full Boot Menu
NOHALT 1
PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 80
LABEL install
KERNEL mboot.c32
APPEND -c location of boot.cfg
MENU LABEL ESXi-5.0.0-XXXXXX-full ^Installer
LABEL hddboot
LOCALBOOT 0x80
MENU LABEL ^Boot from local disk
7 Rename the isolinux.cfg file with the MAC address of the target host machine: 01-
mac_address_of_target_ESXi_host. For example, 01-23-45-67-89-0a-bc
8 Boot the machine with the network adapter.
Chapter 6 Upgrading and Migrating Your Hosts
VMware, Inc. 97