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[TUTORIAL] Boot ESX 3i from USB key

Posted by on 3/11/09 • Categorized as Tutorials,VMWare

This one is getting filed under “Try it really soon!” However, randomly answering an email, I came across this document on http://www.vminfo.nl detailing the process for making a bootable USB key with ESX 3i installed.

Certainly, the document goes into a lot more detailed instructions, but here’s a bit of a summary:

  1. Using an archiving program eg. IZArc, extract the contents of the Vmware ESX 3i ISO image. Given it’s an ISO, you could also mount it using DaemonTools or it’s like.
  2. Once the files are extracted, find the INSTALL.TGZ file and open it.
  3. Navigate to the \usr\lib\vmware\installer directory.
  4. Open the Vmware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-11072.i386.dd.bz2 file. This may take a while, so patience, young padawan! Then extract the un-compressed .dd file
  5. Restore the boot image to the USB thumb drive. Effectively, you’re restoring a “virtual hard drive” (in this case the .dd file extracted above.
  6. Now that’s done, it’s time to test! Boot the sucker and play with ESX 3i!

The only real “gotcha” in this one is pretty obvious: make sure you have a motherboard that can boot from USB. Thankfully, these days most new motherboards have this ability. If in doubt check your motherboard manual or the manufacturer’s website.

Regrettably, I don’t have a font big enough OR bold enough to stress that this is UNSUPPORTED IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT!! Try it at your own risk!

ESX 3i on USB

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  • http://geeklog.lucid.net.au/ Jason Lingohr

    I guess a key question or point to make here is…. _why_ would you want to do this…

  • http://invurted.com Adam

    That’s actually a really good question. One potential answer is a diskless server. In my experience (especially in a SOHO environment), one of the big problems is failing disk drives. In fact, I have managed to kill two drives so far!

    So, let’s remove one of the more likely elements that will fail.

    Of course, now I am relying on the USB bus (inherently slower than physical disk) for my OS AND all my storage has to be on a NAS of some description. Certainly, hardware vendors are shipping servers with 3i pre-installed as well.

    It complicates things a little, however in a SOHO or test environment it allows me to get around the need for local storage. In an enterprise; great for testing and playing, but in a production environment I would go for ESX3.5.