ESXI 5.5 pxe boot

[nawar]

Is there a tutorial to pxe boot ESXI 5.5 using fog

[Tom Elliott]

No, because it works the same as a normal system pxe boot.

[george1421]

I agree, what specifically are you having a problem with? I can pxe boot VMs on my ESXi 5.5 servers.

Just thinking about it, I seem to remember something about putting / enabling the vSwitches for promiscuous mode. (From memory) there is a tab in the vswitch setup that has 3 options and all three are disabled by default. One of those options was to allow promiscuous mode. That needs to be enabled.

[nawar]

Hi
I think my question wasn’t clear
I want to boot a pc to esxi installer not VMs
I tried a tutorial about pxe booting esxi in my fog server, but I’m keep getting “INT18: boot failure”.
I think I have problem adding the esxi iso to the boot menu

Thanks for ur help

[falko]

Have you checked the wiki?

wiki include any iso in the bootmenu

[george1421]

OK I think I have a path forward on this. Understand this is not a typical use case for FOG or something that FOG would even consider to support (speaking for myself not the FOG Project). You will have to do some work to assemble all of the bits. On the surface this should work.

The first bit you need is from the vmware site.
https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp#com.vmware.vsphere.install.doc_50/GUID-2F0D4696-3681-4C13-9552-5280C6406376.html

The important bits are:

1. Copy the contents of the ESXi installer ISO image to the /var/www/html directory on the HTTP server.
2. Modify the boot.cfg file with the information for the HTTP server.

The other post is a KB I created for pxe booting MDT iso images. Use option 1 deployment method. https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6284/booting-mdt-2013-litetouch-with-fog

The idea is to create a folder in /var/www/html/fog called isoimages and then inside that folder create one called esxi55. Copy the contents of the esxi installer iso image (not the iso itself) to that location. Then you need to modify the boot.cfg in that folder /var/www/html/fog/isoimages/esxi55 with the proper settings (from step 2 of the vmware document).

Lastly you MUST use a trunk build of FOG to be able to edit the pxe boot menu from the FOG configuration gui

This next part is a bit of guessing based on Method 2 of my KB.
Menu Item: esxi.BOOT
Description: Boot ESXi 5.5 Installer
Parameters:
kernel -n mboot.c32 http://${next-server}/isoimages/esxi55/mboot.c32
imgargs mboot.c32 -c http://${next-server}/isoimages/esxi55/boot.cfg
boot

I can’t say if this will work out of the box or take a little playing to make it work. All of the bits are aligned for this to possibly work.

1. VMWare does support pxe booting the installer
2. FOG (trunk) has the flexibility to support pxe booting non-standard images.

[nawar]

Thanks george I shall try it and come back with the results

[Junkhacker]

i believe i was able to get the esxi iso to boot using memdisk iso raw