[Solved] VMWARE ESXi PANIC: Failed to find HD boot partition

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The only solution I have found is to run the server from a thumb drive and use the embedded hard drive to store your virtual servers. This solution worked for me.

To achieve this in this way you will need:

  • A USB thumb drive 1GB or larger
  • An active Linux machine (or, use a liveCD option on your PowerEdge such as Knoppix or Gentoo LiveCD)

Mount your ESXi ISO:

mount -t iso9660 -o loop VMware-VMvisor-InstallerCD-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.iso /mnt/esx

Write the installer file to the thumb drive:

tar xvzf /mnt/esx/install.tgz usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.dd.bz2 -O | bzip2 -d -c | dd of=/dev/sdb

Assumptions here (adjust to your settings):

  • /dev/sdb is where your thumb drive resides
  • VMware-VMvisor-InstallerCD-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.iso is the name of your ISO file
  • usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.dd.bz2 is the name of the dd file in your iso (run tar ztf /mnt/esx/install.tgz to see what your exact file name is, it should be similar and relatively obvious)

It will take a few minutes to write, and when it’s done simply boot off of this thumb drive. The PowerEdge servers have an internal USB (at least mine does) if aesthetics are important to you.

Source: http://cyborgworkshop.org/2008/08/30/install-vmware-esxi-onto-a-usb-thumbdrive/

EDIT 12/19/2009: ESXi 4.0.0 uses image.tgz instead of install.tgz to store it’s dd file

solved VMWARE ESXi PANIC: Failed to find HD boot partition