About Vmware* Esxi* 3.5; About Installing Vmware Esxi 3.5; Preparing To Install - Intel S5000PAL Installation Manual

VMware* Infrastructure* 3 Installation Guide for VMware* ESXi* 3.5 Installable –
Intel Server Board S5000PAL
®

About VMware* ESXi* 3.5

A VMware* ESXi* 3.5 host is a physical server that contains an ESXi image installed on a local hard drive.
When the ESXi host is booted, use the direct console user interface for initial configuration and
troubleshooting of the ESXi software. The direct console appears when a monitor is connected to the host.
If the VMware* Infrastructure Management* software is installed, the VMware Infrastructure client
applications is able to manage the host.
When the ESXi host is powered on for the first time or when the host is powered on after the host is reset
to the configuration defaults, the host enters a boot up phase during which system network and storage
devices are configured with defaults.
The default behavior for networking is for the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to configure IP.
The default behavior for storage is all visible blank internal disks to are formatted with the virtual machine
file system (VMFS) so virtual machines can be stored on the disks.
After the host completes the boot up phase, the direct console appears on the monitor. Using a keyboard
and monitor attached to the host, examine the default network configuration applied during the boot-up
phase and change any settings that are not compatible with the network environment.

About Installing VMware ESXi 3.5

Using the VMware ESXi 3.5 CD-ROM, install the ESXi software onto a SATA, SAS, or SCSI hard drive.
Installing on a USB drive, an IDE/ATA drive, or a SAN-based drive, such as FC SAN or iSCSI SAN, is currently
not supported.
During the installation operation, the installer reformats and partitions the first 750 MB of the target disk
and installs the VMware ESXi 3.5 boot image. All data located on this part of the drive is overwritten. This
includes hardware vendor partitions, operating system partitions, previous versions of VMware* ESX*, ESX
configuration settings, and associated data. To ensure any data is not lost, migrate the data to another
machine before installing VMware ESXi 3.5.
After VMware ESXi 3.5 is installed, reboot the host. During the reboot operation, the VFAT scratch partition
is created on the disk from which the ESXi host is booting. Each blank disk on the installation hard drive is
formatted and the VMFS-3 partition is created.
After the installation is complete, existing VMFS data can be migrated to the ESXi host. For information on
migrating data, see the VMware Upgrade Guide available from the VMware website.

Preparing to Install

If the server network address is not configured using DHCP, make sure the network information is available
for post installation configuration. In this case, the following is necessary:
The IP address for the physical server where ESXi is being installed.
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