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ESXi 5.5 Scratch Pad

gebhard , ,

This is my personal scratch pad with information I had to research to get ESXi 5.5 to work for me.

Installation ESXi 5.5 / Win 7 Dual Boot

I decided that it would be handy to have ESXi running on my box … So basically this is what I did (disclaimer: if you break your stuff you're alone – don't blame me!):

  • important: have one physical disk dedicated for ESXi
  • moved data from a spare drive to other drives to have a dedicated physical drive ready
  • noted down exact HDD model numbers and NIC model using control panel
  • checked NIC against VMware ESXi HCL – no luck 🙁 … so we need some customizing
  • downloaded ESXi ISO
  • downloaded ESXi Customizer (http://www.v-front.de/p/esxi-customizer.html)
  • searched for VIB file compatible with my NIC and created a customized ISO (see detailed description here: http://miketabor.com/vmware-esxi-5-home-lab-upgrade/)
  • burned customized ESXi ISO image to CD-ROM
  • shut down system
  • physically disconnected all HDDs except the dedicated (now empty) spare drive
  • booted from CD-ROM, installed ESXi (attention: HDD will be erased!)
  • connected to ESXi host from notebook and did basic configuration
  • shut down ESXi
  • reconnected all other HDDs
  • booted into Win 7
  • created dual boot configuration Win 7 / ESXi (as described here: http://thoughtsandtweaks.blogspot.de/2013/09/multiboot-windows-server-and-esx.html)
  • rebooted and tested dual boot – nice 🙂

Error Opening Disks (vmdk) crated on VMware Workstation

The following error occured when trying to boot a VM guest created on VMware workstation:

"File [VMFS volume] VM-name/VM-name.vmdk was not found"

The solution is to convert the vmdk files to another format ("thin"). For details see VMware KB 2036572.

Updating ESXi 5.5u1 to 5.5u2 using CLI

These three steps worked for me: http://www.v-front.de/2014/09/vmware-releases-vsphere-55-update-2.html 

# open firewall for outgoing http requests:
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient
# Update using the ESXi 5.5 U2 Imageprofile from the VMware Online depot
esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-5.5.0-20140902001-standard
# Reboot your host
reboot

Enable Copy & Paste

Copy & Paste is diabled by default when running VMs in ESXi and accessing them via vSphere Client or VMware Workstation. To enabled C&P edit the VMX file (download from data store, edit, upload / edit directly using SSH access) and add the following lines: 

isolation.tools.copy.disable = "FALSE"
isolation.tools.paste.disable = "FALSE"

Shutdown and restart the VM

Reference: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1026437

… to be continued …