After the announcement at VMworld 2013, the new release of VMware ESXi is now available. The option to install VMware ESXi 5.5 on USB stick is still available.
The standard installation procedure remained the same as previous releases 5.x. and the installation media can be the classic CD-ROM or using a USB stick as well.
Procedure
The procedure to install the hypervisor on USB media follow same steps already documented for release 5.0. The guides can be found in these posts:
- Installare VMware ESXi 5.0 tramite chiavetta USB bootabile (ENG translation soon available)
- Installare VMware ESXi 5.0 su chiavetta USB (ENG translation soon available)
Once the installation is complete and the correct network parameters have been set, the hypervisor main screen appears as follow:
Set the system logs location
After the installation, accessing the host via vSphere Client the system reports the following warning message:
System logs on host localhost.localdomain are stored on non-persistent storage.
Because the logs need a persistent storage (ESXi resides on a removable USB media with this procedure) you need to set the directory to a persistent storage location type. To set this parameter in ESXi, go to Configuration > Advanced Settings > Syslog.
Identify the field Syslog.global.logDir and set the value to:
[storagename] LOGS/hostname
example: [nas_lun2_raid1] LOGS/lab-esxi01
Click OK to confirm.
As you can notice, the warning message is no longer shown.
Your ESXi 5.5 host is now ready to be configured for your virtual infrastructure.
