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 …
Install ESXi 3.5 to an IDE drive By default, if the ESXi install can not find a supported device to install to, then the installer will quit with the error message: “Unable to find a supported device to write the VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 image to.” If it is the case that the IDE …
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 …
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 …
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 …
ESXi comes in two flavors, embedded and installable. Installable comes on a CD but if you have to do a number of installs or repeat installs, it’s a bit of a pain to always have the CD ready. Plus in my home lab, my newer servers don’t have a CD-ROM so I have to dig …
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 …
Motherboards and unsupported servers that work with ESX 3.5 and/or ESXi 3.5 Installable Read More »
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 …
This table contains a list of systems, motherboards, storage controllers and network cards that have been tested and found to work with ESX 4.x or ESXi 4.x Installable. Please check out the Server/PC column for a system you are considering using, as some systems will include special steps to enable ESX / ESXi to run …
Motherboards and Servers that work with ESX 4.x and/or ESXi 4.x Installable Read More »
