Importing the RCLI Appliance

To improve reliability and reduce security vulnerabilities, VMware removed the service console from ESX 3i. To run commands that one would normally run at the service console, it is necessary to download one of three packages from this location. There are two install packages, one for Windows and one for Linux, and one virtual appliance which …

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ESXi 3i Enable SSH

ESXi 3.5 does ship with the ability to run SSH, but this is disabled by default (and is not supported). If you just need to access the console of ESXi, then you only need to perform steps 1 – 3. At the console of the ESXi host, press ALT-F1 to access the console window. Enter unsupported in …

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ESXi Enable FTP

Some have found the download speed using the datastore browser in the VI client or via vifs.pl in the RCLI to be too slow for day to day transfers. It is possible to enable SSH, but sometimes even the performance of that is not great due to the inability of ESXi to perform SFTP transfers thus relying on …

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ESXi USB Install

If you have a host that doesn’t have a CD-ROM or want to modify oem.tgz, you may find it easier to extract the ISO image to a USB flash drive and then run your install from it. The below method will allow you to create a USB flash drive which you can then use to …

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Motherboards and unsupported servers that work with ESX 3.5 and/or ESXi 3.5 Installable

This table contains a list of systems, motherboards and SATA controllers that have been tested and found to work with ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 Installable. Please check out the source column for a system you are considering using as some systems will include special steps to enable ESX / ESXi to run on that system …

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SATA Mounting root Failed

In some cases when you install ESX 3.5 on a system with a SATA controller, the install will complete but will fail to boot with the error “mounting root failed”. The problem is that ESX does not recognize the specific SATA but you may be able to edit the PCI id database files to get ESX …

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