ESXi running on USB but not installing on hard drive

[glen4cincy]

I'm trying to get ESXi up and running on my NUC device.

It appears to boot but the process is fairly lengthy, like around 2 to 4 minutes.

Once I see the "running" screen, it shows me what IP address I can manage it from but it never actually installs on the hard drive of the NUC, it only runs on the USB stick I configured using Rufus from the .iso I downloaded.

I remember installing ESXi a number of months ago, but it was on different hardware.

Booting into BIOS shows an internal hard drive and the USB stick so I'm confused as to why it seems to be running as a "live" system.

Can someone point me to what is going on here?

Thanks in advance.

[IRIX201110141]

If you would like to install ESXi than you have to use the ESXi Installer. It will let you to select a installable medium if one exists.

Note: After booting ESXi runs from inside a RAM Disk so the speed of the boot media doesnt matter if you reboot your ESXi one or two times per year form patching/upgrades.

Regards,
Joerg

[glen4cincy]

I'm not sure which one of these would be the installer.

This is what I have downloaded from my vmware:

"VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi ISO) image (Includes VMware Tools)

2019-08-20 | 6.7.0U3 | 314.66 MB | iso

Boot your server with this image in order to install or upgrade to ESXi (ESXi requires 64-bit capable servers). This ESXi image includes VMware Tools."

I also tried this download:

"VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi ISO) image (Includes VMware Tools)

2018-04-17 | 6.7.0 | 330.31 MB | iso

Boot your server with this image in order to install or upgrade to ESXi (ESXi requires 64-bit capable servers). This ESXi image includes VMware Tools."

Both of these say "Boot your server with this image in order to install or upgrade to ESXi" so I cannot understand why it's not installing and only running from the USB and not actually installing to the hard drive.

[IRIX201110141]

Both are right ... 6.7u3 is just the latest. So boot from that ISO and select a USB, SD, HDD/RAID/LUN as install target.

Regards,
Joerg

[continuum]

The difference between an ESXXi installer boot-stick and a ESXi-live boot-stick is minimal - the difference is basically just a different boot.cfg.

So if you have not done this changes yourself it is not completely impossible that a failed install had an obscure result.

Anyway - to check if you still have a working install-image look for the very first screen.

If the stick is in Installer mode you should see a message "Installing ESXi ..."

If you dont see it and dont get the questions the installer usually asks then rebuild your bootstick.

[glen4cincy]

I didn't do anything except download the .iso and use Rufus to build the stick.

When I boot, I see quite a bit of activity and finally it hangs on this screen:

I stumbled across this error and a possible solution that mentioned hitting TAB while it is booting. That didn't do anything but it does show the option of hitting SHIFT-O that allows me to type"

“ignoreHeadless=TRUE”

My setup isn't headless but adding this seems to allow it to start normally.

I'm not getting any options whatsoever, though, it just appears to start.

This BIOS screen if I stop it before it boots to the stick does detect the internal HD and the stick.

[continuum]

Maybe it helps to use the bootoption formatwithmbr but that would not work with 6.7 - it should work with older versions.

For older versions you would use shift + O and then enter : runweasel formatwithmbr

[glen4cincy]

Ok, I'm making progress.

When I pressed Shift-O I saw the option

"cdromBoot runweasel" which I was backing out and replacing with

"ignoreHeadless=TRUE"

I decided to try with both options in there. This time, it successfully booted and installed on the hard drive!

On reboot, it continues to hang at the same spot unless I Shift-O and add the "ignoreHeadless=TRUE" after which it boots successfully into ESXi.

So, now, I just need to figure out how to do this automatically.

I'm guessing I need to modify the boot.ini file?

[Techstarts]

When you are the screen of installing esxi, you get option to choose where to install?

Are you saying that you do not see this option? Then internal HDD is not detected or what?

[continuum]

Yes - looks like that.

Find the boot.cfg file that is used on your system.

To do that connect via WinSCP and find the partition that has the boot.cfg file side by side with all the modules that are loaded at boot-time.

If you are sure you got the right one use the WinSCP embedded editor and edit the boot.cfg file.

It has a line starting with

kernelopt= installerDiskDumpSlotSize=2560

Your version may have different options listed already. Add more options by using a space to separate them.

In your case the result may look like

kernelopt= installerDiskDumpSlotSize=2560 ignoreHeadless=TRUE

dont add quotes or other fancy characters - dont use a Windows based editor to edit this file. The embedded editor of WinSCP is ideal for the job.