i recently needed to install esx 4.0 onto an older server which did not have a dvd drive. after looking at many different methods for creating usb bootable drives , tricks, etc. nothing was particularly straight forward, with fat16, vs fat32, master boot records, dos bootable, etc…..
i came across unetbootin (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ ) which is available as a windows or linux installable. i downloaded the windows version, plugged in my 4GB USB stick and ran it (it’s just an executable) on my laptop. I specified the ESX 4.0 image as the iso diskimage.
this created a perfectly bootable usb stick on a 4GB device. The creation took about 5-6 minutes on a USB 2.0 port on my laptop.
once completed I added askmedia to the boot options in the syslinux.cfg file because the default wants to boot from cdrom only.
edit syslinux.cfg
If you don’t want to do this you can select you install option for ESX and then add askmedia to the kernel parameters.
to install from USB make sure you can boot from “removable devices”, then go through the install questions. when it asks if you want to install from cdrom/usb, nfs, localdisk, etc. select cdrom/USB and install will proceed like from a DVD.
the upside of this approach is if you attempt to boot on an older server with only USB 1.1 which is all i had, you can use an alternate method for installing. i ended up specifying an NFS server and path which made considerably quicker work of getting data to the disk.
hopefully this was a useful trick for you to use.
Cheers – Jase
I have a USB drive I have created with unetbootin which works for interactive installation.
I have created a CF card the same way and put into my SUN blade. All works until it tries to copy files.
Changed syslinux.cfg and added askmedia – all works until I get the askmedia prompt. There it shows no USB/CDROM.
Opened a console and was able to mount /dev/sda1 as /mnt/source and found there the files on the CF-card.
Obviously the VMware device drivers found the CF-card as a SCSI disk, and not as a USB-drive.
Do you have any idea how I can acess the CF card (as a SCSI device) as a installation/media source ?
These instructions rock. I followed them step by step and everything worked OK. These are the best and simplest instructions I could find on the net.
Five stars from me :o)
Just tried it, and your instructions are perfect. Great post!
Thanks so much for the askmedia trick. That killed a long day of otherwise fruitless attempts.
You rock!!
Duffie
Hi Jason,
The instructions are perfect,but I need to do automatic install with ks.cfg.
I put the ks.cfg on the root usb and I do F2 and add ks=usb askmedia -all
That not working any idea?
Thanks,
Gil
Great work, this is simple and the best reference on the ‘Net.
Ben
Jason,
Works brilliant, just installed ESX 4.0 Update 1 from USB.
Thx for your research.
This worked without issue. Thanks for taking the time to post this!!!!!!!!!!!
Just wanted to echo my thanks – after I found UNetbootin, I thought I was all set. The “askmedia” addition did the trick for me. Awesome find, thanks for sharing.
[…] Jason Thomasser wrote up a good post on how to install ESX4 from USB using unetbootin. […]
I just installed ESX 4.1 using this procedure and it works perfectly. Thanks for posting.
Cheers!
You rock! this is fantastic , just wasted 4 hours until i found this! thanks mate
Excellent and simple.
I tried going with the graphical mode first, it was stuck for several minutes. I rebooted and went with Default. It still takes a good 3-4 minutes before it actually starts.
Thank you for your post/s. Keep them coming.
I’m trying to do the same kind of thing using a USB key that I set up using the HP USB Key tool. There are several boot options on this 8GB USB Key including HP Firmware, HP SmartStart and a couple of others. I can get the initial load part of the process to work, but the install fails when it’s trying to find the data after the basic install menu gets to the point of asking about the destination. Here are the menu options I’m trying that almost work(the installer never asks about the install media):
DEFAULT VMware/menu.c32
PROMPT 0
MENU TITLE VMware ESXi Boot Menu
menu title VMware VMvisor Boot Menu
timeout 80
label ^ESXi
menu label ^ESXi Installer
kernel VMware/mboot.c32
append VMware/vmkboot.gz — VMware/vmkernel.gz — VMware/sys.vgz — VMware/cim.vgz — VMware/ienviron.vgz — VMware/install.vgz media=usb:VMware askmedia
Can anybody steer me in the right direction about how I can correctly point the installer to the correct media location?
Hi,
I have exactly the same problem as Robert. When installing ESXi4.1 the syslinux.cfg file generated doesn’t look anything like the one in the example above so I get failures as a result when i’m just about to start the actual install.
I have no CD drive or ILO so USB installation is my only option.
CC,
Check the following instructions:
You need to modify the syslinux.cfg, and add a kickstart script. I did both as per the article, and the installer followed thru with no prompts.
FYI, the newest UNetbootin causes menu.c32 errors possibly from syslinux v4. I used UNetbootin 494 with success.
http://sf.net/projects/unetbootin/files/UNetbootin/494/
I am trying to mount the USB Drive via redirection with Dell iDrac after unetbootin completed and I keep getting an error. It appears I cannot access the contents of the usb after unetbootin made the usb. Is there a way for me to mount the usb on my workstation for read access so that I can redirect for remote install? Thanks in advance.
Andrew I don’t know if the Dell iDrac supports this, but it will work for HP iLO2 or iLO3. With HP you can attach the ISO image file directly to the iLO. I would think Dell has a similar feature.
Tried this after a long time search on the web. Everything worked great! Thank you very much for sharing.
Only one difference to the installation from CD: I was not able to keep the existing Datastore on the local media. But it doesn’t really matter, because the VMs are all in the san.
Thanks again
Andreas
Jason,
this is a great tutorial.
I’m facing an issue while trying to install ESX on a server that for some reasons has no monitor nor vga card.
the boot starts until I get an error after it loads the install.vgz
Loading install.vgz..
Booting: MBI=0x00010120, entry=0x0040024a
I tried with text install as well with no luck.
I was wondering if anyone been successful in doing such an installation ? The only thing i did not test yet is the console redirection configuration from BIOS.
thanks in advance
Hi,
I Have read many posts on installing esxi 4.1 installation from usb. pls let me know if there is any bug in 4.1 .when ever I try to boot from usb , I get the error cannot mount image …
so pls guide me if possible
Here is another way to do did it without modifying any script.
1. You need a U3 USB pen drive
2. download the Universal Customizer from here: http://forums.hak5.org/index.php?showtopic=3437,
3. rename teh VMWare VSphere ISO to U3CUSTOM.ISO
4. Overwrite the UC U3CUSTOM.ISO with your one.
5. Run UC
6. Done. Ready to install on any server as U3 CD drive is supported.
Guys,
It’s working very well but could it be possible on the same USB stick to add the drivers of My RAID board?
I need to specify those drivers during the native ESX installation but after boot, ESX does not detect my ARECA CD drivers in my USB cdrom.
I tried to copy those drivers on the USB stick I used to install ESX: got an error message saying “Not a valid ESX driver CD”
I tried to copy those RAID drivers on another USB key: no more chance.
Many thanks for your support!
Save the day.
Thanks much.
[…] Here are the instructions I used to download esx-DVD-4.0.0-164009.iso a 797mb iso and copy it to a USB stick.https://jthomasser.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/install-esx-4-from-usb-using-unetbootin/ […]