Reverting back to HDD to boot ESXi

[ala139]

I am new to vmware and am currently using vSphere 5 (Free).

After reading up on the ability of booting our HP DL380 booting off a USB stick, I decided to try it, and was successful. However, I am uncertain if this is really "best practice," as I have read there is some pros and cons to this method.

I have read posts that describe how to replicate my stick in case it goes dead, but my question is, can I revert back to placing ESXi back on the HDD, and how would I go about it?

Thanks in advance.

[Troy_Clavell]

thread moved from the Virtual Machine & Guest OS Community to the VMware vSphere Hypervisor Community

[James Bowling]

All you need to do is reinstall.  Remove the USB stick and reinstall it.

[ala139]

I apologize for not being more clear, but I was asking in the context if I had a vm or two already installed/configured already on the host, and then I decided to abandon the USB boot and revert back to HDD. Does your instructions still apply in this circumstance, or is there another method I need to go through?

Thanks.

[James Bowling]

Yes as your datastore(s) that your VM(s) live on should be on either a local or shared disk array to begin with.

[ala139]

Forgive me if my response sounds like I just discovered they invented "sliced bread" but.... WOW! If that's the case, this virtualization is really great.

And yes, my datastore is on a seperate array on the same machine as my test vm.

Thanks for clarifying.

[James Bowling]

No worries.  Please let us know if there is anything else we can help you with.  There are a ton of us here in the community who are willing to help.