Diskless Boot of ESX4 and ESX4i with PXE and iSCSI

Since EDA and UDA are still in their beta phase and there aren’t much alternatives available for installing a VMware ESX4 or ESX4i server unattended, I thought “let’s build one myself”. I’m not a Linux guy so I had to create a Windows distribution server. In my search I’ve discovered a great little piece of software called CCBoot. This windows application enables a diskless boot of an ESX4i with iSCSI. Diskless boot makes it possible for ESX server to be operated without a local disk. The 'diskless' server is connected to a VMDK file over a network and boots up the hypervisor from the remotely located VMDK file. CCBoot is the convergence of the rapidly emerging iSCSI protocol with gPXE diskless boot technology. Remote boot over iSCSI, or CCBoot, pushes the iSCSI technology even further, opening the door to the exciting possibility of the diskless computer.

Here are the steps to set it up:

The first thing to do is create a VMDK file with ESX4 in it, I’ve used VMware Workstation. Don’t forget to choose a Linux 64 bit guest OS and add the two following additional lines to the VMX file.

monitor.virtual_exec = "automatic"
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "true"

When ESX4 is installed we’re going to set-up the distribution server, go to http://ccboot.com and download the CCBoot v1.7 Build 20090527(5 users free version). When you’ve installed it, create an entry for you physical ESX4 server.