[TUTORIAL] Boot ESX 3i from USB key
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:
- 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.
- Once the files are extracted, find the INSTALL.TGZ file and open it.
- Navigate to the
\usr\lib\vmware\installerdirectory. - Open the
Vmware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-11072.i386.dd.bz2file. This may take a while, so patience, young padawan! Then extract the un-compressed .dd file - 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.
- 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!
I guess a key question or point to make here is…. _why_ would you want to do this…
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.