ESXi 7 - USB boot drive alternatives

[Witzker]

whats the reason you dont start with an USB drive?

As I have always trouble booting a ESXi 7 on my tiny M93p and the sticks are ruined in short time, I have the idea to boot the M93p from an i SCSI Lun on my Synology Disk station.

further, I heard that VMware will no longer support booting from USB Sticks in future releases, so I might be also of Interest for wider audience?

What do you think?

 

[Witzker]

I think your link is not helpful:

Prerequisites

• Configure the iSCSI boot firmware on your boot NIC to point to the boot LUN.
• Change the boot sequence in the BIOS so that iSCSI precedes the boot device.
• If you use Broadcom adapters, set Boot to iSCSI target to Enabled

I think it has to be done with an PXE server on Synology that says the machine where the boot drive iSCSI on Synology is!
But is only an estimation!
What do you think?

Or how to ->

• Configure the iSCSI boot firmware on your boot NIC to point to the boot LUN.

I think this is not possible with my hardware??
Therefore, the PXE way?

 

[Rand__]

Only you can tell, depending on the capabilities of the nic in your system.
You'll need to point the nic to an iscsi lun that you can mount and then install esxi on
Then you can boot it.

No idea if you need to go the pxe route

 

[Witzker]

No idea if you need to go the pxe route

Lock what has been said before

PXE should be the way?
Hope someone knows !
Do You know how to set up the PXE way?

As I figured out, I need a
1) PXE server on Synology
2) a SAN (LUN iSCSi) on Synology
3) instructions how to set up Boot from PXE in Bios of the Lenovo Tiny M93p