Specifications

PXE Boot the ESXi Installer Using gPXE

You can PXE boot the ESXi installer using gPXE.

See also “About Installation and Upgrade Scripts,” on page 117 and “About the boot.cfg File,” on page 125

Prerequisites

Verify that your environment has the following components:

The ESXi installer ISO image downloaded from the VMware Web site

HTTP Web server that is accessible by your target ESXi hosts

DHCP server configured for PXE booting: /etc/dhcpd.conf is configured for client hosts with a TFTP

server and the initial boot file set to gpxelinux.0/undionly.kpxe. See “Sample DHCP Configuration,”

on page 93.

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.

gPXELINUX

(Optional) ESXi installation script. See “About Installation and Upgrade Scripts,” on page 117.

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 Copy the contents of the ESXi installer ISO image to the /var/www/html directory on the HTTP server.

2 Modify the boot.cfg file with the information for the HTTP server.

Use the following code as a model, where XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the HTTP server IP address. The

kernelopt line is optional. Include that option to specify the location of the installation script for a

scripted installation.

title=Loading ESX installer

kernel=http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/tboot.b00

kernelopt=ks=http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/esxi_ksFiles/ks.cfg

modules=http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/b.b00 --- http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/useropts.gz ---

http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/k.b00 --- http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/a.b00 ---

http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/s.v00 --- http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/weaselin.v00 ---

http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/tools.t00 --- http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/imgdb.tgz ---

http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/imgpayld.tgz

3 gPXE boot the host and press Ctrl+B to access the GPT menu.

4 Enter the following commands to boot with the ESXi installer, where XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the HTTP

server IP address.

dhcp net0 ( if dchp is not set)

kernel -n mboot.c32 http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/mboot.c32

imgargs mboot.c32 -c http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/boot.cfg

boot mboot.c32

vSphere Upgrade

98 VMware, Inc.