Install ESXi on some kind of flash storage, mirror the 300gb drives, raid 5 the larger drives. No sense in wasting space on those 300gb drives for the hyper visor. Besides the Flash Card resp. It's basically as galad mentioned i guess. If i boot from the esxi install disk and install from what I understand it will wipe everything, does this mean I will lose the raid configuration and drivers etc. Do I need to install these manually re-configure the raid at a later date? What should the install steps be for a new server like this? The raid controller is a p410i/256 2.

As part of the on-going VMware article series, earlier we discussed about VMware virtualization fundamentals, and how to install VMware Server 2.

In this article, let us discuss about how to install VMware ESXi.

VMware ESXi is free. However, the software comes with a 60 days evaluation mode. You should register on VMware website to get your free license key to come out of the evaluation mode. Once the ESXi is installed, you can either user vSphere Client on the Direct Console User Interface to administer the host.
VMware ESXi is based on hypervisor architecture that runs directly on top of a hardware as shown below.

1. Download ESXi server

Get the software from the VMware ESXi download page.

Following are the various download options available. Select “ESXi 4.0 Update 1 Installable (CD ISO) Binary (.iso)” and burn a CD.

• ESXi 4.0 Update 1 Installable (CD ISO)
• Upgrade package from ESXi Server 3.5 to ESXi Server 4.0 Update 1
• Upgrade package from ESXi Server 4.0 to ESXi Server 4.0 Update 1
• VMware vSphere Client and Host Update Utility

2. VMware VMvisor Boot Menu

Once you insert the ESXi CD and reboot the server, it will display a boot menu with an option to launch “ESXi Installer” as shown below.

3. VMware ESXi Installer Loading

While the installer is loading all the necessary modules, it will display the server configuration information at the top as shown below. In this example, I was installing VMware ESXi 4.0 on a Dell PowerEdge 2950 server.

4. New ESXi Install

Since this is a new installation of ESXi, select “Install” in the following screen.

5. Accept VMware EULA

Read and accept the EULA by pressing F11.

6. Select a Disk to Install VMware ESXi

VMware ESXi 4.0.0 Installer will display all available disk groups. Choose the Disk where you would like to install the ESXi. It is recommended to choose the Disk0.

7. Confirm ESXi Installation

Confirm that you are ready to start the install process.

8. Installation in Progress

How to make a bootable drive for a mac on a windows. The installation process takes few minutes. While the ESXi is getting installed, it will display a progress bar as shown below.
Teoria de maquinas y mecanismos shigley pdf.

9. ESXi Installation Complete

You will get the following installation completed message that will prompt you to reboot the server.

10. ESXi Initial Screen

After the ESXi is installed, you’ll get the following screen where you can configure the system by pressing F2.
In the next article, let us review how to perform the initial ESXi configuration.

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I recently had to install VMware ESXi 6.0 on a server sporting an Areca RAID controller. Since Areca supplies VMware drivers on their site, and this is a well-established name-brand controller, you may expect it to be easy to get it working. It isn’t exactly easy, since VMware doesn’t natively support this controller, but I did get it working, and since this same basic procedure could be adopted for other models/brands/situations, I wanted to post how I did it, since I couldn’t find anyone else on the internet at the time who had useful instructions for someone who hadn’t done it before (or with this version of VMware).

Ok, first of all, we may be more than 15 years into the 21^st century, but you wouldn’t know it when you’re trying to install a driver in VMware’s latest 6.0 version of ESXi, which hasn’t even been out that long. For some reason, if you have a 3^rd party driver to install that doesn’t come natively in VMware, it all needs to be done using arcane command line syntax with multiple 3^rd party programs. Why they don’t just have a place in the GUI to click on that allows you to easily install drivers in VMware, I don’t know. To make matters worse, you can’t even get to the GUI if you haven’t installed VMware yet, so that’s the first problem you’ll run into if you try to install it onto drives attached to your new RAID controller. (This particular model was the Areca ARC-1214-4i.) Sure, you can download drivers from Areca’s web site, but it doesn’t do you much good when the VMware installation screens never once offer you a chance to install a 3^rd party driver (like Microsoft has done since the NT4 days when you could always hit F6 during installation, and then give it a floppy disk, etc.).

No, instead, the way they recommend you do it (assuming you’re only running a few physical VMware servers) is to install it to a USB flash drive, and THEN once its installed, you can install the RAID controller drivers. (And I do mean USB flash drive – I tried installing it to an external USB HDD first, and it wouldn’t see it. When I plugged in a little 2GB USB key though, it came right up!) So yes, you’ll install VMware to a USB flash drive, and THAT will be your boot drive forevermore, so make sure it’s a drive you don’t want back ever again! ;)

Ok, so now you’ve installed VMware to your USB key and booted it up, and it’s working fine, but when you connect from the vSphere Client, it tells you there are no datastores defined, and it asks if you’d like to add one. But, when you try to go ahead and create a datastore as it suggests, it gives you NO WAY to add a new controller/drivers to create the datastore on!

So here’s what you do:

First, go to the server’s physical console/monitor, and go into Troubleshooting, and enable ESXi Shell and SSH.

Then, back at a workstation, download your driver file and look inside to find the *.VIB file that is for your make/model card.

Use the freeware WinSCP program to copy the VIB file to the VMware server in /tmp/.

Now use the freeware PuTTY to bring up a terminal window giving you basic command line access to your server. (Don’t be alarmed if it moves slowly logging you in.) At the PuTTY prompt, run this command:

For a file that’s only 30kb it takes a long time to complete doing whatever it’s doing behind the scenes after you enter that command. I didn’t time it, but it seemed like I waited a good minute or more before I finally got some kind of response from the server. If it worked, it will give you a message that it was successful, and will probably have a line saying something like “reboot needed: true” which of course means you need to reboot the server.

At this point you can close PuTTY and WinSCP, and reboot the server (I do it from the physical server’s console/monitor). After its rebooted (and assuming you’ve already correctly set up a drive/volume in a RAID array on the controller), then you should now be able to create a datastore and can move forward using VMware as usual.

Whew! What a pain! VMware obviously knows that major manufacturers make cards that people use with their stuff, so I don’t know why it’s so difficult to install a 3^rd party driver. Areca doesn’t help the situation, by giving a vague indication in their nearly useless README.TXT included with the driver download that basically just tells you to manually install the VIB file. Couldn’t THEY at least point you in the right direction?!? Anyway, hopefully you found this blog post before spending too many hours banging your head against a wall trying to put all of the pieces of this puzzle together yourself…

–Steve