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How to create a bootable ESXi Installer USB Flash Drive with Linux, Windows or Mac

This article explains how to create a bootable ESXi Installer USB Flash Drive with Linux, Windows, and Macs. Installing ESXi with a USB flash drive is a convenient method for physical servers that do not have remote management.

ESXi Image Download

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Pre-installed ESXi 6.0 on SD Cards or Flash Drives

Many ESXi installations are running on SD Cards or flash drives. In my opinion, it's a good practice. The hypervisor itself requires about 150MB, and the full installation on a SD Card is less than 1GB, without diagnostic partitions. VMware recommends using a 4GB or larger USB/SD device. When you want to install ESXi and you don't use auto-deploy, install servers or other automation tools you typically have to mount an ESXi ISO file to your server management system (iLO, iDRAC,...) or work with a physical installation media. This is somewhat slow and uncomfortable, but there is a little trick to make the installation faster.

You can prepare the USB/SD device with the ESXi installer, plug it into your server and install it to the device itself by overwriting the installer. You can also use customized installers when your hardware requires special drivers.Read More »Pre-installed ESXi 6.0 on SD Cards or Flash Drives

Unattended ESXi Installation from an USB Flash Drive

I was asked if it is possible to create an USB Flash Drive that can install ESXi on a server automatically. ESXi has a Scripted Install feature which allows to put all installation parameters into a Kickstart file to run unattended Installations. This post explains how to create an USB Flash Drive that does unattended ESXi installations. You can plug it into a Server, power it on and ESXi will be installed automatically.

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