vSphere Installation and Setup - Documentation - VMware

vSphere Installation and Setup
6 Copy the isolinux.cfg file from the ESXi installer ISO image to the /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg directory.
The isolinux.cfg file contains the following code, where XXXXXX is the build number of the ESXi installer
image:
DEFAULT menu.c32
MENU TITLE ESXi-5.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-5.x.x-XXXXXX-full ^Installer
LABEL hddboot
LOCALBOOT 0x80
MENU LABEL ^Boot from local disk
7 Rename the isolinux.cfg file with the MAC address of the target host machine: 01mac_address_of_target_ESXi_host.
For example, 01-23-45-67-89-0a-bc
8 Boot the machine with the network adapter.
PXE Boot the ESXi Installer Using gPXE
You can PXE boot the ESXi installer using gPXE.
See also “About Installation and Upgrade Scripts,” on page 50 and “About the boot.cfg File,” on page 59
Prerequisites
Verify that your environment has the following components:
n The ESXi installer ISO image downloaded from the VMware Web site
n HTTP Web server that is accessible by your target ESXi hosts
n DHCP server configured for PXE booting: /etc/dhcpd.conf is configured for client hosts with a TFTP
server and the initial boot file set to gpxelinux.0/undionly.kpxe. See “Sample DHCP Configuration,” on
page 20.
n Server with a hardware configuration that is supported with ESXi 5.1. See the Hardware Compatibility
Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php.
n gPXELINUX
n (Optional) ESXi installation script. See “About Installation and Upgrade Scripts,” on page 50.
Use a native VLAN in most cases. If you want to specify the VLAN ID to be used with PXE booting, check that
your NIC supports VLAN ID specification.
Procedure
1 Copy the contents of the ESXi installer ISO image to the /var/www/html directory on the HTTP server.
24 VMware, Inc.