VMWare ESXi Help

[Wendelspanswick]

I've been tasked with loading a custom configuration of Debian onto a hosted virtual machine and its all new to me!
I've launched the ESXi interface, created a virtual machine and loaded it with a guest OS Debian, I've uploaded the custom Debian into the datastore and its shown as loaded in the CD/DVD drive 1.
How do I get the virtual machine to boot from the CD/DVD drive?

 

[Kayos]

Does it need mounting once its loaded?

 

[MattH]

F2 or F4 on boot of the VM from memory. Can be a pain to hit it fast enough (making sure focus is in the VM console window). Or edit the properties of the VM.

 

[Wendelspanswick]

Sorted it, boot options were greyed out because the Virtual Machine was running. Once the Virtual Machine was powered off I could get it to open the boot options on power up then I changed the boot loader to the CD Drive.
Next is how to assign a Network Adapter and IP address?

 

[MattH]

The installer should automatically setup the virtual network adapter added in when the VM was created. Just make sure the ESXi host has a virtual switch created with a physical nic attached to a physical switch.

If you picked Linux type VM on creation you should be fine. If not then you may have to change the vNic type to something more compatible before os installation.

 

[rikrobson]

The virtual CD drive won't mount by default. You need to configure the drive to load with the iso on boot.