When you install ESXi, the installer attempts to allocate a scratch region on an available local disk or data store. This takes time.įinally, the installer - by design - doesn't create a scratch partition on USB devices. This means if your USB device fails, your ESXi host goes down until you replace your flash drive, which requires you to reinstall and reconfigure ESXi on a new drive. Pay attention when picking your USB and choose a supported device.įlash drives also don't support RAID.
However, USB devices can wear out fast due the high ratio of I/O operations. You should maximize your internal storage for data, rather than an ESXi hypervisor. In addition, some servers lack much internal storage space. It lowers your electricity bill, too, because diskless servers use less electricity and generate less heat. This lowers the cost of each of your servers by several hundreds of dollars. In fact, you don't require internal storage at all if you use traditional shared storage infrastructure.
When you use a small USB flash device to contain your ESXi hypervisor, you save precious space in your internal direct-attached storage. Pros and cons of installing ESXi on a USB In addition, with Installable, you can install the latest version of ESXi, with the latest patches included. This Installable version works with any server that supports booting from removable USB drives. However, you can also install ESXi on a USB flash drive yourself. This product only works with servers from specific vendors that support ESXi, such as Dell Technologies, VMware's parent company. The vendor provides an image on a USB flash drive that plugs into an internal port on a server's motherboard. Instead, VMware makes an ESXi Embedded edition available for physical servers equipped with ESXi firmware. As a result, you can no longer install ESXi using CDs or DVDs. However, they fell to the wayside as other technologies - such as solid-state drives - outpaced them in terms of capacity.
In the past, you might have used such drives to install software or even to install a whole server's OS. Most modern servers don't provide optical drives. You can deploy a diskless server system this way, which saves electricity and money. ESXi can use the storage provided by USB thumb drives to boot a small-footprint ESXi hypervisor. Standard servers include internal or external USB slots. But for new servers, installing ESXi on a USB might be the cheapest and most efficient installation option. If you already use ESXi on local disks, it might not be worth switching to a USB method. From there, you can run ESXi on almost any system. You can use free software - such as Rufus - or VMware Workstation to install ESXi on a flash drive. It supports key features, such as traffic shaping, role-based security access and vSphere PowerCLI, and it requires minimal hardware resources. VMware ESXi is a reliable, popular hypervisor.
You don't need any specialized knowledge or skill to do so all you need is an ISO image of ESXi and a USB drive. Overall this approach seems a tad easier than my old method located here: After solving this also read the post over on vcritical and noticed that Eric mentions this in his steps. After I powered down the VM and added the usb ctrl the USB mass storage device was recognized and attachable to the VM and the installer went off w/out a hitch. Had me laughing and hanging my head in shame that it took me a few minutes to figure out what the heck was going on. The default ESX4 install profile in VMware workstation (at least in my Workstation 7 for Linux) does not add a usb controller thus making the usb device unavailable to select as a mass usb disk for the selection as an install device. Just a heads up for those of you trying to use workstation to perform this method of ESXi on usb key trickery. But then again why would you clone it when you can install it in less time. This is a generic USB install which can be used in any server or easily be cloned. Keep in mind, although you install ESXi there’s no server name or IP-address assigned to the installation. Select the USB drive when the “Select a Disk” screen is shown.Connect the USB device to the VM and select “mass storage device”.Install VMware Player (next / next / finish).
One of the articles which has always been in my top 10 most read(with most hits coming from google) is “ ESXi 3.5 Update 2 on a USB memory key“.