6.0.2

Table Of Contents
If you do not use gPXE, you might experience problems while booting the ESXi installer on a heavily loaded
network TFTP is sometimes unreliable for transferring large amounts of data. If you use PXELINUX without
gPXE, the pxelinux.0 binary le, the conguration le, the kernel, and other les are transferred by TFTP. If
you use gPXE, only the gpxelinux.0 binary le and conguration le are transferred by TFTP. With gPXE,
you can use a Web server to transfer the kernel and other les required to boot the ESXi installer.
N VMware tests PXE booting with PXELINUX version 3.86. This is not a statement of limited support.
For support of third-party agents that you use to set up your PXE booting infrastructure, contact the vendor.
Figure 81. Overview of PXE Boot Installation Process
ESXi target host
DHCP server
TFTP server
Web server or
TFTP server
DHCP server
script depot
ESXi host
Installer
starts
TCP
ks.cfg
Give me an
installation script
UDP
IP
Give me an IP
for the kernel
TCP or UDP
kernel
Give me
the kernel
UDP
mboot and supporting files
Give me the
network boot loader
UDP
IP & TFTP server
Give me an
IP for the
network adapter
Chapter 8 Before Upgrading Hosts
VMware, Inc. 147