Install Broadcom driver for VMware ESXi

1. Download Broadcom NetXtreme II Ethernet network card driver CD from http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/drivercd/esx40-net-bnx2x_400.1.48.107-1.0.4.html. Burn a CD from the file just downloaded.

2. Because the Perl script vihostupdate.pl is used for the installation, download vSphere client CLI from VMware site http://www.vmware.com/downloads/eula.do.

3. Install the vSphere client CLI which is a bundle of Active Perl and some admin tools on the administration PC. It is better to include the tools in the %PATH% before using the them.

4. Switch the host to the maintenance mode before the installation. Key in the following one by one from the console:
press alt+F1, type: unsupported, enter the root password. Run following command to switch to the maintenance mode.

vim-cmd /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter

Please note that enable ssh login is alternative way to run above command remotely.

5. After the host is in the maintenance mode, following command can be used to install the driver from vSphere client command line.

vihostupdate.pl --server 192.168.1.100 --install --bundle E:\offline-bundle\BCM-bnx2x-1.48.107.v40.2-offline_bundle-181332.zip

6. Reboot ESXi.

Run VMware ESXi 4.0 on USB devices

There are many posts in how to run VMware ESXi on USB flash in the Internet. However, the method can be applied to the USB portable disk as well.

This is one of the links for running ESXi 3.5 on USB flash drive, http://www.atomicsub.net/2009/01/vmware-esxi-usb-flash/. Be very careful to select the correct disk. The image uses entire disk space, so all data on the disk will be wiped out.

The steps to run ESXi 4.0 are the same as the above except the image dd file is in image.tgz instead of install.tgz.