PXE Boot the VMware ESXi installer

If you are like me, then you want to use network booting for everything, especially installs. PXE booting the VMware installer with pxelinux is much easier than I thought it would be. First, copy the entire contents of the installer CD to your tftp directory. I copied mine to /tftpboot/esxi/3.5.

Now, open your pxelinux.cfg/default. Add this entry, changing the path to each of the components to coincide with where you placed the files within your tftp directory. 

label esx35i
  kernel esxi/3.5/mboot.c32
  append esxi/3.5/vmkernel.gz --- esxi/3.5/binmod.tgz --- esxi/3.5/ienviron.tgz --- \
  esxi/3.5/cim.tgz --- esxi/3.5/oem.tgz --- esxi/3.5/license.tgz --- esxi/3.5/install.tgz

That's all you have to do.

You may also want to look at the post on PXE booting and kickstarting the ESX installer.

Posted by Tyler Lesmann on July 15, 2008 at 12:04
Tagged as: pxe vmware
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Comments
#1 Tom wrote this 2 years, 10 months ago

Ok... But have you sorted out a way, yet, to do more than just PXE boot? That is, can you do the equivalent of an unattended JumpStart/Kickstart?

#2 Tyler Lesmann wrote this 2 years, 10 months ago

Let me do a little research and I will make a post on this. ESX does support Kickstart, as it is a Red Hat derivative.

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