6.0.2

Table Of Contents
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DHCP server congured for PXE booting. See “Sample DHCP Conguration,” on page 148.
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PXELINUX.
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Server with a hardware conguration that is supported with your version of ESXi. See VMware
Compatibility Guide at hp://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php.
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Network security policies to allow TFTP trac (UDP port 69).
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(Optional) Installation script, the kickstart le. See About Installation and Upgrade Scripts,” on
page 174.
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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. To specify the VLAN ID to be used with PXE booting, verify that your
NIC supports VLAN ID specication.
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 les, locate the pxelinux.0 le, and copy it
to the /tftpboot directory on your TFTP server.
3 Congure the DHCP server to send the following information to each client host:
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The name or IP address of your TFTP server
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The name of your initial boot le, 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 le, add the kernelopt option to the line after the
kernel command, to specify the location of the installation script.
Use the following code as a model, where XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the IP address of the server where the
installation script resides, and esxi_ksFiles is the directory that contains the ks.cfg le.
kernelopt=ks=http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/esxi_ksFiles/ks.cfg
6 Create a PXE conguration le.
This le denes how the host boots when no operating system is present. The PXE conguration le
references the boot les. Use the following code as a model, where XXXXXX is the build number of the
ESXi installer image.
DEFAULT menu.c32
MENU TITLE ESXi-6.x.x-XXXXXX-full Boot Menu
NOHALT 1
PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 80
LABEL install
KERNEL mboot.c32
APPEND -c location of boot.cfg
MENU LABEL ESXi-6.x.x-XXXXXX-full ^Installer
LABEL hddboot
LOCALBOOT 0x80
MENU LABEL ^Boot from local disk
vSphere Upgrade
150 VMware, Inc.