VMware ESX 4.0 - INSTALLATION GUIDE UPDATE 1 Installation Manual page 34

ESX and vCenter Server Installation Guide
6 PXELINUX or gPXE searches for a configuration file on the TFTP server, and boots a kernel according to
that configuration file. In our case, the configuration file instructs PXE to load the kernel (
ramdisk (
initrd.img
7 The client downloads the files it needs and then loads them.
8 The system boots the ESX installer.
9 The installer runs interactively or scripted, as directed by the PXE configuration file.
10 The installer uses the installation media, either from a media depot stored on the network, or locally via
DVD or USB.
11 ESX is installed.
PXE Boot the ESX Installer
This procedure describes how to use a TFTP server to PXE boot the ESX installer.
Prerequisites
Your environment must have the following components:
TFTP server that supports PXE boot
n
PXELINUX
n
(Optional) gPXE, which is part of the SYSLINUX package. If you have a newer version of SYSLINUX,
n
gPXE is already built. If you are building gPXE from source, you can unpack it on most Linux machines
and run the
make
For gPXE, a Web server that is accessible by your target ESX hosts
n
DHCP server configured for PXE booting
n
(Optional) ESX installation script
n
Network adapter with PXE support on the target ESX host
n
IPv4 networking (IPv6 is not supported for PXE booting.)
n
Procedure
1 On a Linux machine, install TFTP server software that supports PXE booting.
If your environment does not have a TFTP server, you can use one of the packaged appliances on the
VMware Marketplace. If you do this, note that certain functions, such as correct operation of the text menu
system, are operating system dependent.
2 Put the
menu.c32
For gPXE, put the
n
RHEL5, which contains Apache. The HTML documents are placed in
you can copy
For PXELINUX without gPXE, put the
n
3 On the Linux machine, install PXELINUX.
PXELINUX is included in the SYSLINUX package. Extract the files, locate the file
, and copy it to the
0
34
).
command.
file in an accessible place in a supported location.
file on a Web server. For example, you can use the httpd package in
menu.c32
.
menu.c32
directory on your TFTP server.
/tftpboot
file on a TFTP server.
menu.c32
) and a
vmlinuz
, which is where
/var/www/html
or
pxelinux.0 gpxelinux.
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