ESXi 6.7: VM Booting from USB [Solved for now]

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Rocxxr

New Member
Mar 31, 2018
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Tried figuring out how to boot vm's from usb on esxi 6.7. Host usb device (passthrough-lite?) failed. PCI passthrough with the usb controller + Host usb device passthrough failed. In the end the fundamental issue comes to booting after installing the media. Solution is found here, save yourself the trouble until something better comes along: Boot ESXi Virtual Machine From Passthrough USB - Virtualization Howto and using an iso to bootstrap the boot process: Plop Boot Manager 5.0 - Download

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The only other method I can think of that has not been attempted is to give the esxi the usb and put a datastore on it. However the reason this was not attempted is because the usb drive was never presented to esxi in the storage adapter area in vSphere. I suspect the usbarbitrator has to be disabled, format it while it is disabled and hope it registers to esxi, then re-enable pressumably because tinking with things in cli is bad if you dont fully understand what is going on? Be interesting to know if this works and is not harmful.
 
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zer0sum

Well-Known Member
Mar 8, 2013
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If you upgrade to ESXI 7.0 it supports natively adding USB drives to VM's, and can boot straight from them :D

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Rocxxr

New Member
Mar 31, 2018
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If you upgrade to ESXI 7.0 it supports natively adding USB drives to VM's :D

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damn.....Your wording has me question wheter you know what was trying to be accomplished though. So you can pass the usb to the vm, successfully install and boot the vm from the usb? If so I am jealous.
 
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zer0sum

Well-Known Member
Mar 8, 2013
849
473
63
damn.....Your wording has me question wheter you know what was trying to be accomplished though. So you can pass the usb to the vm, successfully install and boot the vm from the usb? If so I am jealous.
Yes...you don't need PLOP anymore :D