To install the actual ESXi image to USB flash (ie you don’t want to install ESXi onto a local hard drive)

Thanks to Duncan Epping’s post on Yellow Bricks for the following walk-through:

1. First get the following tools: 7-Zip (Free), WinImage (Demo)
2. Download the ESXi ISO
3. Open the ISO with 7-Zip
4. Extract “install.tgz”
5. Open “install.tgz” with 7-Zip
6. Click on “install.tar”
7. Browse to “usr\lib\vmware\installer\”
8. Open “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-103909.i386.dd.bz2?
9. Extract “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-103909.i386.dd”
10. Open WinImage and go to Disk, click on “Restore Virtual Harddisk Image on physical drive”
11. Select a physical drive
12. Select “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-103909.i386.dd”
13. And click “yes” to write the DD image to the USB Disk

To create INSTALLABLE media on a USB flash drive (ie you want to boot from the USB flash disk and ultimately install onto a local hard drive):

Thanks to this post on the squishnet.com blog:

1. Format USB drive with FAT32
2. Extract VMware iso to USB drive
3. Extract SYSLINUX onto C: drive
4. Navigate to syslinux-3.72\win32 and run the following command
syslinux.exe -s -m -f -a e: (e: was my usb drive)
5. This will create a file called ldlinux.sys (hidden file so you need to view hidden to see it)
6. Navigate to the USB drive and rename isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg. You do not need to change anything in this file. The config file boots the mboot.c32 kernel that is included with the esxi install.
7. Make sure your server is set to boot from USB and you are good to go.